CANADA
CAS PUBLIC
THE COMPANY
Founded in 1989 by choreographer Hélène Blackburn, Cas Public favours a research process in choreographic creation founded on the renewal of contemporary approaches to dance. In 2001, the company successfully carved out a niche in the young audience market with the goal of introduction the public to contemporary dance and contributing to its development.
Cas Public thus defines itself as a contemporary dance company dedicated to producing works for general audiences. Recognized for its high-energy, high-performance dance, Cas Public has staked its reputation on the exceptional quality of its works coupled with its presence on national and international stages.
ARTIST WEBSITE
REPERTOIRE
LOVE ME TENDER
Age: For all audiences
Duration: 55min
Audience Size:
Tempting fate, Hélène Blackburn rises to the challenge of her first in situ work featuring several different versions: outdoors or
indoors, by day or by night. With an urban set, clever low-tech lighting, and contagious energy, Love Me Tender has panache ! Produced with minimal resources, this hymn to
resilience echoes with lost innocence and the feel of a bygone era. Lively and precise, the masterful choreography flows with duets and solos that develop into trios, quartets, and ensemble work.
The dancers morph into spectators, lighting engineers, and participants.
Playing with expectations and genres, this impromptu adventure uses shadows, reflections, and lights to express a relationship with others and with space, evoking a sensation of rediscovered happiness through harmony and community. With music by Martin Tétreault, Dear Criminals and Alexandre Désilets and samples of songs by old-school crooners, this performance is a refreshing breath of freedom that captures the spirit of our time.
THE MONSTERS
Age: For all audiences, 6 years and +
Duration: 58min
Audience Size:
Cas Public celebrates 30 years of creation with The Monsters, a production in semidarkness from whose shadows emerge the monsters that inhabit our
childhood imagination, the most disturbing of which continue to haunt us as we age. This project marks the first artistic collaboration between Choreographer Hélène Blackburn and Lighting
Designer Lucie Bazzo. Together they conjure a universe where darkness and light synergistically interact and converse. Light, lighting, shadows, reflections, ghostlike colours: these intangible
forces come together and sculpt the dancing bodies, transforming the performers into alchemists who have the power to bring light out of darkness.
Immersed in the atmospheric music of the Montreal trio Dear Criminals, The Monsters twists the known into the unknown; the familiar becomes strange and the disturbing once again becomes comforting. From illuminated objects to play with reflections, unexpected and surprising elements come alive and follow each other in delicate succession, deceiving our sense of perception. Vulnerability, passion and fierceness are at odds, giving way to the contours of a space where small fears, strange fascinations and vivid pleasures intermingle.
NOT QUITE MIDNIGHT
Age: For all audiences, 9 years and +
Duration: 55min
Audience Size:
In these sombre times, Cas Public summons up the magic of Cinderella. The magic of the tales of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the operas of Rossini and
Prokofiev. But also the magic of a hundred lesser known versions passed down in the oral tradition. Six dancers hand in their ballet slippers for a glass slipper and with gusto plunge us once
again into this fairy tale, so emblematic of our collective psyche. Hélène Blackburn’s choreography becomes a portal to the emotions. Compassionate yet stern, brittle yet powerful, this new
production pays tribute to the qualities of heart and mind which give us the strength to overcome hardship, better ourselves and find fulfillment.
Well-versed in the interpretation of the great classics, the company offers a new way of being moved and enchanted by this masterpiece’s lyric and poetic power. Well versed in deconstructing great classical works, the company has found another way of captivating audiences, of recounting the poetic and lyrical depth of this masterpiece. Hélène Blackburn demands a much less consensual interpretation of the work. Behind the excessive and grotesque nature of some poses, a certain ambiguity flows through and destroys the tale's neat sequencing, going so far as to challenge the idea of Cinderella as a female role model. The ballet's subtitle, "Not Quite Midnight", came to Hélène Blackburn from a line in Mathias Malzieu's novel "La Mécanique du coeur". "If Cinderella had a clock in her heart, she would have stopped the hand one minute before midnight and had a blast at the ball for the rest of her life".
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Eugénie Khoury
Chargée du développement | Development Officer
CAS PUBLIC
5333, avenue Casgrain — Loft 1107
Montréal (Québec) H2T 1X3
O : + 1 514 390 1110
C : + 1 514 668 1232