Bouge de là presents The Studio at Centennial Theatre, Sunday, March 3 at 2 p.m.
THE performance has ended and a child from the third row is walking across the parking lot with his family.
Does he break his walk to skip, dip, hop, shuffle or spin? If he does, the show's been a success.
Helene Langevin, the founder and choreographer of dance group Bouge de là , has been exploring the marriage of music and movement since her youth in Trois-Rivieres, Que.
"As a kid I was quite an athlete," she says, recalling her days of running, swimming, and skiing through the Mauricie region of Quebec.
"At the age of 16 I saw a little ad in the newspaper for a dance group looking for new kids, and I applied," Langevin says. "Since that day it was my passion. And I stopped doing sports."
While athletics required repetition, Langevin found freedom of physical expression in dance.
Bouge de là , translated as "Move from here," has been staging contemporary dance pieces combining video, acrobatics and shadow play since 2000, all with the aim of inspiring children to dance.
Langevin is scheduled to bring her distinct combination of dance and visual arts to Centennial Theatre this Sunday in North Vancouver.
Her career path might seem unlikely for Montrealers who recall Langevin on stage with her female collective in the late 1990s.
The troupe was political and theatrical, taking on serious issues like violence against women, gang warfare and political indoctrination, as well as exploring gothic horror through an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story set in an asylum.
Langevin recalls a particular performance that included a hanging and left the stage covered with blood.
"It was quite baroque. We were ahead of our time, I think," she says, laughing.
However, even when plunging into dark themes, Langevin provided relief.
"I was the one who brought out a lot of humorous movement," she says. "I was bringing lightness to the proposition."
The collective dissolved, but Langevin sought to bring a similar sense of theatricality to performances for children, and Bouge de là was born.
Asked about recruiting talent, Langevin's answer is straightforward.
"What do we look for in a dancer? For Bouge de là , it's to touch the kids," she says.
Her work as a choreographer is largely shaped by contact improvisation, which uses the energy of a fellow dancer like a martial artist might utilize the energy of an opponent.
"It's a technique based on improvisation and on physical laws that are directing the body," Langevin explains. "It's a dance that starts with a contact point and it evolves in all kinds of movement."
The choreographer credits the technique for helping her discover new movements during her early dancing days.
"I started to improvise more than to repeat what the teacher asked me, and I started to be more of an artist after that," she says.
Much of what ends up on stage for Bouge de là is the result of improvisation, according to Langevin.
"I'm like a sculptor. I take some, I leave out some movement, then we're redirecting the composition towards the show," she says.
While dance contests have become a television staple of late, Langevin is always trying to ensure children have as much room to move as possible.
"You don't see a lot of dance in the school system, which is a bit of a pity because they love so much to dance in primary school. They need to dance, they want to dance and they love to dance," she says.
Sunday's show is set to feature an interplay between the Bouge de la dancers and a host of great paintings which will materialize on stage.
"The dancers are doing their own painting with the body," she says. "It's like my body's a paintbrush."
Langevin hopes boys and girls, as well as their parents, will be moved by the mixture of movement, shape and colour that represents her life's work.
"It was my thread all the time. I follow this thread and it always opens up doors to me."
