Isabelle Choinière et Le Corps Indice

La Mue de l'Ange

(Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

In October 1999, Isabelle Choinière premiered her latest creation, La Mue de l'Ange, at the Théâtre La Veillée in Montreal, Canada. A collaboration between Choinière, composer Thierry Fournier and François Roupinian, this piece delves deeply into the relationship between software and choreography. La Mue de l'Ange, which was funded in part by the Daniel Langlois Foundation, examines the virtual body and its implications on the real body. Created for two dancers (Choinière and Angela di Lauro) linked via videoconferencing, the piece uses sound compositions that play on vibrations, pulsations, and equilibrium as well as feedback and digital network interference. The computer network alters and manipulates the bodies of the two dancers as they receive images of the virtual body in time to react with the real. Video and sound components add to the ethereal effect of virtual dance, continually placing the real body in flux.

La Mue de l'Ange (The Angel's Mutation) is about communication on all levels-through flesh, mind, time, space and sound. The hybrid performance is concerned with moulting, the shedding of the skin. As for l'Ange, Angel is the ancients' concept of the virtual, a body that is there but can't be seen and doesn't eat. The imagination is the first virtual."(1)

---

(1) Linda Howe-Beck, "Distant Duet," The Gazette (Montreal) (October 16, 1999): E6.