Marie Claire Forté

June 2024 The relational, experiential, and experimental potential of dance inspires me. I dance, choreograph, write, translate, teach, and support artists. I am Imogen Keith’s mother, and her presence is an incredible force coursing through me. My career has been nourished by long-term creative relationships with artists from different generations and aesthetics sharing a love of process, rigour, and exploration. Notable influences include Peter Boneham, artistic director and master teacher of the now-defunct Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa; Toronto-based choreographer Ame Henderson; Montréal-based choreographer Louise Bédard; multidisciplinary performance group PME-ART; and visual artist Sophie Bélair Clément. 

Recent projects include research and professional development with Katie Ward around Vagabond Dancing, a score to dance infinite realities, and the video installation Mères et mouvements d’enfants presented in 2022 at the Foreman Gallery in partnership with Sursaut and the Centennial Theatre in Sherbrooke, with the curator and artist Camila Vásquez. I am also working alongside curator Véronique Hudon and Espace Perreault transmissions chorégraphiques, documenting traces of exchanges with senior performing artists for an exhibition-performance.

I work with artists whom I love, recently Katie Ward, Louise Bédard, Catherine Lalonde, Priscilla Guy and Émilie Morin, Aurélie Pédron and Sovann Rochon-Prom Tep. I was Dancer in residence at l’Agora de la danse from 2017 to 2019. In 2016, my friend Sophie Bélair Clément and I created the exhibition project and bilingual publication – I’d rather something ambiguous. Mais précis à la fois. at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery. I have been teaching since 2007, regularly at Concordia University. 

I am regularly invited to various other artistic activities: artistic support/outside eye, post-performance talk host, and writer, editor, translator and interpreter. I am currently working on a book with Peter Boneham about his teaching.