Using physical language that emphasizes the kinaesthetic power of dance, Sylvain Émard brings to light the body's intelligence. His many years of experience as a dancer and choreographer have led him to see dance as choreography's only subject : the statement is born of the form and expresses itself through form alone.

Since dance has such great evocative and expressive power, creating a new work always requires much reflection and a thorough development of ideas. As a form of expression, dance may have a long history — yet each performance is necessarily of the moment. It follows that dance must be constantly renewed. To meet this challenge, I enter into a dialogue with the body. The more it speaks to me, the more I understand the full scope of what it has to say. This is how a vocabulary of movement can be developed, and it is precisely what I love most about choreography : being able to develop a language which allows me to investigate the body and reveal some of its deepest secrets.

The linguistics of one’s choreography is much like that of a spoken language : the richer it becomes, the greater its power to communicate. Every language, however, has forms of expression which are facile and must be avoided if one seeks to speak eloquently. This is why form and content must be intrinsically linked ; dance speaks to an audience through the relationships developed between them. The challenge in choreography is to organize a vocabulary of movement into a coherent whole, to create a cohesive work. I am trying to develop dance which has closer ties to everyday living, without losing the poetry of expression. On the contrary, I am trying to give a sense of what life in our society is about.

Sylvain Émard first distinguished himself as a dancer working with renowned choreographers such as Jean-Pierre Perreault, Jo Lechay and Louise Bédard before he formed his own company in 1987. Here his signature style soon emerged. Emard is recognized for his complex and refined choreographic vocabulary. His approach draws on the kinaesthetic power of dance by highlighting the inherent intelligence of the body in both the dancers and the audience. As a prolific artist, he has created more than twenty original works in the last 15 years. From his first solo Ozone, Ozone (1989), to his latest creation Temps de chien (2005), Sylvain Émard excels at laying bare the dramatic and the poetic, at creating an atmosphere charged with emotional intensity.

In 2004, Sylvain Émard is invited by Robert Lepage to choreograph the opera 1984, a masterwork presented in May 2005 at the Prestigious Royal Opera House of covent Garden in London. This highly acclaimed opera was presented at the legendary Scala in Milan in May 2008. Moreover, under the hospices of the Dutch company Station Zuid, Sylvain Émard created 7 by 2, a piece for seven Canadian and European male dancers. This show was warmly received at three reputed Dutch festivals between August and September 2007, for a total of 15 performances.

In addition to commitments with his own company, Sylvain Émard is the President and Founding Member of Circuit-Est, a centre for choreography, and was on the Board of Directors of the Governor General’s Awards for the Performing Arts from 2000 to 2006. He has recently been named an official member of the advocacy committee of the newly created Grand Théâtre de Lorient, in France.

Recipient of the Jean A. Chalmers Prize for Choreography (1996) for his lifetime achievement. This prize is the highest honour in dance in Canada.

Winner of the Grand Prix du Conseil des arts de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal (1996) for Rumeurs.

Recipient of the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Arts Council (1991).

Named Dance Personality of the Year by the Montréal cultural weekly VOIR for Des siècles avec vous (1994).

Nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Agathe (1995).

Since its foundation, Sylvain Émard Danse has continually evolved. During its first years, artistic director and choreographer Sylvain Émard created mainly solo works such as Ozone, Ozone and L’Imposture des Sens (1989). These early creations were presented at the Danséchange Montréal-Bruxelles event and took the company to Europe for the first time. In 1990, the company co-produced De l’Éden au Septentrion with Danse-Cité. The next year, the piece Retour d’Exil premiered at the Festival International de Nouvelle Danse (FIND) in Montreal. These works, characterized by a strong theatrical aesthetic, constituted a meeting of forms : silent theatre and the language of choreography. During this period, Émard was able to gradually lay the foundations of a dance that would become less tragic and more formal. In 1990, Sylvain Émard received the Jacqueline Lemieux Award of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Terrains Vagues (1993) marked the beginning of a second cycle. This piece for three men and a woman allowed the choreographer to develop a new dance involving more interactions between the dancers, thereby energizing the space in a new way. The approach to set design played a key role in the creative process when the rehearsal floor was covered with three tons of earth for a period of three months. This created a perfect fit between dance and its scenic environment and maximized the impact of the work. Presented in Glasgow (Scotland), at the Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), in Montreal and in tours across Western Canada and the Maritimes, this production initiated a much wider dissemination of Sylvain Émard’s repertoire.

In 1994, Sylvain Émard felt the need to return to the solo structure, choreographing and performing Des Siècles Avec Vous. He was inspired by portraits and self-portraits in paintings by Rembrandt and Francis Bacon. Émard made a definitive break from the theatrical references and created a dance based essentially on kinaesthesia. The show was publicly and critically acclaimed, and Sylvain Émard was nominated Dance Personality of the Year by the Montreal cultural weekly VOIR.

While preparing his solo Des Siècles Avec Vous, Sylvain Émard created Agathe, a choreographic commission for the dancer Sophie Corriveau, performed in the series Volet Interprètes presented by Danse-Cité. Agathe was also performed in Toronto, where it was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award. Later, the piece toured the island of Montreal with two other solo works, Le Bruit Qui Court, performed by Luc Ouellette, and À Jamais, interpreted by Marc Boivin.

With Rumeurs (1996), a male quintet co-produced with the Canada Dance Festival, Sylvain Émard explored nature of the human soul under the theme of memory. With five dancers on stage, the choreography became even more organized, with the dance weaved into a more energetic and better-structured fabric. Rumeurs was a great success : attendance was exceptionally high and critics were more than generous. Sylvain Émard Danse was awarded the Grand Prix du Conseil des Arts de la Communauté Urbaine de Montréal in 1996. The same year, he received the prestigious Jean A. Chalmers Award for the body of his work. This acknowledgement constitutes the highest distinction for dance in Canada, and represented a great achievement for the artist.

With the creation of Mensonge Variations (1998), a work for six dancers, Sylvain Émard wanted to explore the formal nature of movement with a view to revealing meaning that had heretofore been hidden. This process resulted in a creation defying all logical description, imbued with a dreamlike quality. This piece clearly represents Emard’s most formal and abstract approach to choreography to date. After a highly regarded world premiere in Montreal, the company began a Quebec tour and was invited to perform for the first time in Paris as part of Printemps du Québec en France.

Once again, after creating dance for a group, Sylvain Émard felt the need to return to the stage. This led to Te Souvient-il ? (2000), a pas de deux co-created by Sylvain Émard and his long-time collaborator, choreographer Louise Bédard. The resulting work drew on experiments in set design by the artist Pierre Bruneau. This collaboration marked the beginning of a new creative cycle for Sylvain Emard, one in which the work of visual artists plays a central role in choreographic development. Acclaimed as a unique piece, reflecting the artistic maturity of both choreographers/dancers, Te Souvient-il ? has been performed more than fifty times across Quebec, English-speaking Canada, Mexico and France.

After being developed in several residencies in Quebec and France, Scènes d’Intérieur premiered in October 2001. Scènes d’Intérieur was the company’s first international co-production, resulting from a collaboration between Sylvain Émard Danse, Montreal’s Studio de l’Agora de la Danse and Centre Culturel Aragon in France. The creative process was based on a documentary approach that drew inspiration from the dancers’ life experiences. Video technology is an important scenic element in Scènes d’Intérieur. The result is choreography in which relationships with others take centre stage. With Scènes d'intérieur, the company reached audiences across the province of Québec, where the work was enthusiastically received in nine cities. Critics praised it as a "master work," and this success crossed many borders. The work was presented in close to twenty cities across English Canada, in France and in Great Britain.

In March 2004, Pluie had its world premiere at Montréal's Usine C. The piece represents the first production in a new cycle of work called Climatology of the Body. The underlying theme is climate as a metaphor for the impact of external elements on our lives. In this duo, Sylvain Émard underscores how different aspects of the environment can influence an existing relationship between a man and a woman. The choreographer and his collaborating artists took advantage of two creative residencies at the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault to further develop their creative process. This time around, Sylvain Émard indulged his interest in combining a variety of art forms by calling on Toronto visual artist Edward Pien to create the set design. In March 2005, the new climatic pas de deux took off for Europe, marking the beginning its international journey.

The second work in a climatological cycle, Temps de chien was premiered in October 2005 at Montréal's Usine C. This time Sylvain Émard wanted to delve even deeper into notions of how outside influences affect individuals, and set out to examine their impact on relationships between six people. The work lets us read these profound transformations into the body and see how they are expressed in interpersonal dynamics. As part of the creative process, the company benefited from several residencies at l'Agora de la Danse (Montréal), the Grand Théâtre in Lorient (France), and at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Alberta). This diverse group of settings contributed to the work's rich choreographic premise; they offered the conditions required to develop short fragments that drew on the surrounding geography.

Temps de chien is an international coproduction of Sylvain Émard Danse, the National Arts Centre (Ottawa), the Banff Centre (Alberta), the Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa) and Le Grand Théâtre (Lorient-France).

In June 2006, Sylvain Émard Danse was one of the Canada Dance Festival headlines with Temps de chien presented at the National Arts Centre. In April 2007, this remarkable group piece toured the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and France.

In December, 2007, Sylvain Émard embarked on the creation of Wave - third and last chapter of the Climatology of bodies. This work for five female dancers will have its world première at the Zeeland Nazomerfestival in Holland on August 27th, 2008. It will then be presented at the internationale tanzmesse nrw in Düsseldorf, before touring the Netherlands. Wave will make its North American première at Usine C in Montreal, where it will run from September 9 to 20, 2008.

Wave is an international co-production of Sylvain Émard Danse, Station Zuid (The Netherlands), the Grand Théâtre de Lorient (France) and l'Usine C (Canada).

Sylvain Émard Danse gratefully acknowledges support from the Canada Arts Council, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and the Conseil des Arts de Montréal.