Osez! 2025

What inspires you in Niki de Saint Phalle’s work?

Bruno Pradet : I love the tension between the vivid colours and the sometimes unsettling forms of the characters she created. I’m moved by the way she brings her works to life by literally shooting at them. I’m fascinated by the sense of feminine power that emanates from her as an artist.
And I love that she admired Gaudi and the Facteur Cheval.

Karine Ledoyen : The bright colours, the mix of mediums, the boldness of form, and the playful dimension of her work. She blurs the boundaries between art, public space, and sensory experience — you can touch, wander, sit inside the artwork; she invites the body to enter the art. Her feminist commitment, her ability to transform pain into creation. She reminds me that art can be joyful, political, instinctive, and deeply human all at once.

Karine Ponties : Her laughter and lucidity in interviews, her movement that dispenses dreams and happiness. The way she places high art and popular art on the same level. The dazzling polychromy of her works. She has all the qualities of a good fairy, a magician, yet with the unsettling determination of a witch. Enchanting and baroque, with a natural feminism. A maker of dreams who lets nothing stop her, not even illness, thanks to her stubborn belief in healing through the breath of laughter.

How do you approach the challenge of creating a choreographic work with a large group in just a few days?

BP: With the fear of a great leap into the void. But a leap so much softer than the one into which so many of our contemporaries are thrown that the fear ends up turning into joy. I look forward to meeting new faces, new bodies…

KL : I rely on fast decision-making, trust in the group, and a collective energy that often becomes a driving force. We’ll see… but the biggest challenge for me will be creating as a trio, and making sure we truly meet each other in the process!

KP : It is an adventure, opening your eyes and ears wide, learning from the moment, being fully present and sharing the experience as it unfolds. It is a great opportunity to invent new possibilities through encounter, five thousand kilometres from home. It is about seeking a poetic language as a fragile form of what moves through us, escapes us and surpasses us.

What is the biggest project you’ve worked on, or the one you’re most proud of?

BP: The biggest? Dancing with Mireille Mathieu for the Eiffel Tower’s centennial celebration (it was my first paid contract!). I’m usually happier than I am proud of the projects I’ve had the chance to create. I find it hard to rank them, because the joy they brought is inseparable from the moments in life when they happened. That said, I would mention Chaos intime, a 2002 duet that marked the beginning of the company; L’homme d’habitude, a piece with Les Blérots de R.A.V.E.L., like a giant summer camp; and finally People, what people, a piece for seven dancers that crossed a few borders — to our great delight.

KL : It’s hard to choose just one project, but I’d say I’m most proud when I manage to push beyond my limits — artistically, humanly, or logistically. Sometimes these aren’t the most visible or outwardly ambitious projects, but the ones that transformed me the most. And I believe I’m creating one of those right now… Homo confortus.

KP : I do not think I have ever felt pride for one piece over another. This is my 52nd work if I include this one, which is very special because we are three. What matters most to me is perseverance over time and the opportunity to still be here. Is thinking about the world more important than thinking about the forms creation takes? Isn’t the creative process the source of every form of action? Isn’t the real challenge to create a sense of responsibility for each of us, to ask how our individual destinies feed into a more collective one? How can a poetic gesture still resonate within the brutal reality of today’s world, by questioning the human and the non-human? We lack new ways of telling the world. Poetry, with its insolence and patient understanding of beings and things, opens up a space of possibilities. It is a radical, uncompromising way of being and thinking the world. I believe the three of us share something of that, so let’s go.

Production: Danse K par K
Artistic Direction and Concept: Karine Ledoyen
Coordination: Marion Mercier
Direction technique : Mélany Bolduc
Communications: Émilie Rioux
Graphic Design: Isabelle Pelletier

Choreography: Bruno Pradet, Karine Ledoyen, Karine Ponties / Sound Design: Jean-Michel Dumas / Performance at MNBAQ: Alexia Stephens, Anne-Charlotte Lajoie, Aria Trotel, Audrée Foucher, Audrey Dupont, Emma Walsh, Fabien Piché, Frédérique Delisle, Julia Frison, Léa Bernier, Léa Ratycz-Légaré, Marilyn Daoust, Meï Thongsoume, Mia Boudreau, Sara Harton, Sarah Pisica, Sonia Montminy, Valérie Pitre / Performance at MPLD: Alexia Stephens, Anne-Charlotte Lajoie, Arnaud de Balanda, Audrey Dupont, Charo Foo Tai Wei, Emma Walsh, Frédérique Delisle, Jade-Emmanuelle Amyot, Jeanne Forest-Soucy, Josiane Bernier, Lila Dubois Pagesse, Lou Amsellem, Malicia André, Meï Thongsoume, Mia Boudreau, Misheel Ganbold, Nelly Paquentin, Rosalie Boivin.

Acknowledgements: Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, ’Entente de développement culturel de la Ville de Québec, Patrimoine Canadien, Canada Council for the Arts, SOLIVI, Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins, MNBAQ.

Photographer : David Cannon, MNBAQ