Structure

A WORD FROM THE GENERAL MANAGER

Working at the heart of an innovative structure like Lorganisme is a great source of inspiration and challenge. My role is to set up the tools required to support our artists in their creative development while moving forward with the implementation of our unique operating model. In 2020, the integration of two new artist members breathed new life into our structure and led us to new artistic grounds.

The productions carried by the company were able to embrace a wider range of forms and styles giving rise to new collaborations and encounters. Around the table, rich conversations and stimulating exchanges; also a deeper awareness of the issues of diversity, representativeness and access to the means of production closely affecting our community, and consequently a tenfold desire to act on it on our scale.

These peculiar past few years have been favorably marked by this new fruitful and promising dynamic, having resulted in the development of projects benefiting a broader pool of artists. Thus Lorganisme’s aspiration to become a vibrant meeting place with a community-wide reach persist. And this goal informs my commitment to this structure and the artists involved.

Sylvie

A WORD FROM THE ARTISTIC REPRESENTATIVE 

These past two years have forced us to isolate ourselves, we lost the possibilities of meeting and being together enabling us to dream about the future. On the other hand, this forced downtime allowed us to realize how much the contact with others is at the core of our artistic language.

This interruption also allowed to shed light on Lorganisme’s purpose, or “raison d’être” in Quebec’s dance landscape ; a structure where our practices are thought and imagined in community rather than in competition and in silos. Ten years ago, our operating model was atypical, going against the traditional way of establishing a company. Even today, Lorganisme stands out for its way of envisioning the sharing of resources and knowledge. The micro-society that we form within this structure allows us to constantly question our ways of doing things, review our production methods and to feel supported by our peers.

Succeeding Anne Thériault, I like to consider this artistic representation mission in resonance with the way my colleagues have imagined this company for the past ten years. I continue to see Lorganisme as an incubator for new ideas, new models, new projects open to the community, to dance communities, all tinged with the diversity of the respective practices of its five members – Anne, Amélie, Caroline , Sovann and myself – all forming the richness of this structure.

Let us reiterate the need for more company models similar to ours in the current dance landscape. Let’s use the plural force of this vehicle to continue to imagine dance rooted in its communities, in tune with the complexities of the current world in which we evolve as artists, as humans. Long live Lorganisme !

Sébastien Provencher

A WORD FROM THE FOUNDING MEMBERS

The singular vehicle that is Lorganisme is now ten years old. It was born from the conviction that the single-choreographer organizational model needed to be rethought in a context where the drying up of art funding continues, and, even with the increase of choreographers and talent, support remains frozen. This ongoing dry spell is not strictly a matter of balancing the books: it affects us on a day-to-day basis and has driven us to call upon our last resources. In an era when time for creation is sacrificed to administrative duties, and competitiveness eats away at us and isolates us, we had to imagine a zone of re-enchantment, where other artists would become catalysts again instead of competitors, a space in which the strength of all of us would act as a springboard to inspire each one of us. Lorganisme’s raison d’être is to build up a solidarity that lightens and propels us, ensuring the sustainability and longevity of our practices while enabling each creator to develop a distinct territory and uniqueness. To ensure that creation again becomes the artist’s primary activity and concern, as it should be.

Amélie, Anne and Caroline