Usually Beauty Fails

The Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup 

Presented By: Theatre Junction

Wednesday, April 15- Saturday, April 18 @ 8 PM

Six dancers and a live rock band take the stage in a performance that shakes up the roles of pop culture and the avant-garde, performing a ‘concept album’ of human desires: beauty, love, sex and the challenges of relationships. Following in the grand Montréal dance tradition of La La La Human Steps and Compagnie Marie Chouinard, choreographer/musician Frédérick Gravel ignites the stage in Usually Beauty Fails, an audacious and carnal work that places conflict as art and elevates reality’s imperfections into performance. Mirroring the swift emotional changes and raw sexuality that saturate so much of our lives, the dancers move irreverently through the wildly energetic choreography, ready to explode to the raw electronic rock beats of the live music. Moving between his roles as choreographer, dancer and musician in the piece, the enigmatic and multi-faceted Gravel turns the performance upside down, disrupting the passivity of the audience and their expectations of contemporary dance with a paradoxical and self-referential irony.

“Gravel creates a bare beauty that resists aesthetic standards…” – Voir, Montréal

The Grouped’ArtGravelArtGroup (GAG) is a variable collective of multi-talented artists who work together to “create extensively, try prolifically and persist enormously.” Led by Frédérick Gravel, a dancer, choreographer, guitarist, singer and lighting designer, their work is presented in all kinds of settings, from classic venues in Montréal, to underground spaces in New York and major festivals in Europe. An established leader in the Montréal dance scene, Gravel’s creations cultivate artistic ambiguity while playing with the cultural zeitgeist. He purposely subverts the expectations and landmarks of the avant-garde in a way that is self-aware and inclusive, incorporating diverse elements of pop culture and performance art that challenge existing paradigms of contemporary dance and bring raw, emotional work to the stage.

To Buy Tickets go to www.theatrejunction.com or call 403.205.2922 ext. 1