Valérie Lessard
Enseignant.e, Travailleur.se culturel.le, Vidéaste
Valérie Lessard is an archivist, teacher, videographer, mediator, and cultural worker in the dance community in Montreal. She studied contemporary dance (UQAM, BA, 2006) and cultural organization management (HEC, graduate diploma, 2010).
She participated in the project Le retour du temps (summer 2007-fall 2008-winter 2010) by choreographer Lucie Grégoire. From 2007 to 2023, she taught Dance and Society 1 and 2 and Career Management at the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (EDCM). As a videographer, she directed the documentary Vincent Warren: un temps en mouvement (2010), the dance short film Les insulaires (2016), and various short documentaries for Danse Danse (2020-2022).
In 2018-2019, she was in charge of professional relations at the Regroupement québécois de la danse (RQD). There, she led discussion circles on inclusion in dance and was project manager for the annotated lexicon Comprendre les enjeux de l’inclusion en danse, the comic Danser ce n’est pas tout accepter, the toolkit Prévenir le harcèlement et autres violences, and the toolkit Favoriser l’inclusion et l’équité dans le milieu de la danse.
Holder of a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Montreal (EBSI-MSI 2017), she solidified her passion for the promotion of cultural heritage. She completed her internship at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and began her career as an archivist at the Radio-Canada media library. She participated in the dance heritage roundtable of the RQD and contributed to its publication Du patrimoine de la danse au Québec (2019). She also collaborated with EC2 of the Jean-Pierre Perreault Foundation (Congrès AAQ 2017 et Entre traces et écriture 2018).
In 2020, she founded the company Filigrane Archives, which specializes, among other things, in the management and promotion of performing arts archives, as well as the documentation of artistic projects and the production of documentary content.