Photo : © Ian Douglas
Dana Michel returns to FURIES, after presenting CUTLASS SPRING to a sold-out audience in 2022!
As a child, Dana Michel would drape a yellow towel on her head in an attempt to become blonde and to be othered. In YELLOW TOWEL, she revisits this escapist world of alter-egos in a performative ritual free longing to be free of censorship.
Blending austerity and absurdity, she digs into tropes of black culture and of marginalized beings, turning them inside out to see whether or not she can relate. We witness her allowing a strange creature to emerge from this excavation in a slow and disconcerting metamorphosis that we follow with fascination. An attempt at exorcisms in technicolour.
Dana Michel is a choreographer and performer whose work focuses on live art. Her work interacts with the broad fields of improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, cinematography, techno, poetry, psychology, dub and social commentary, inviting the audience into a centrifugal experience. Before graduating from Concordia University in her late twenties with a B.A. in contemporary dance, Dana worked in marketing and was a top-level runner and soccer player. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the ImPulsTanz Prize (Vienna) (2014), the New York Times Choreographer of the Year (2014), the Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance at the Venice Biennale (2017), the ANTI festival International Prize for Living Art (Finland, 2019), the Canada Council for the Arts Jacqueline-Lemieux Prize (2022), the Prix de la Danse de Montréal, international category (CINARS, 2024). Based in Montreal, she is currently touring with four of her solo works: YELLOW TOWEL, MERCURIAL GEORGE, CUTLASS SPRING and MIKE. (Photo : Richmond Lam)
Choreography, performance, set design and costumes
Dana Michel
Lighting and technical direction
Karine Gauthier
Artistic advisors
Ivo Dimchev, Peter James, Mathieu Léger, Antonija Livingstone, Manolis Tsipos
Sound advisor
David Drury
Production
Dana Michel
Delegated production
Parbleux
Coproduction
Festival TransAmériques (Montreal), Studio 303 (Montreal)
Creation residencies
Compagnie Marie Chouinard (Montreal), M. A.I (Montreal), Le chien perdu (Brussels), Usine C (Montreal), Circuit-Est Centre Chorégraphique (Montreal), Studio 303 (Montreal), Agora de la danse (Montreal).
The creation of this work was made possible with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Programme d’action culturelle du Cirque du Soleil and M.A.I.
