Ouvre mes yeux is an immersive contemporary dance solo by queer artist Charles-Alexis Desgagnés, performer-choreographer and artistic director of the company Personne Danse. The work unfolds within the artist’s actual place of residence, Chez Personne, an artist’s loft located in the heart of Montreal.
The extreme proximity of the audience invites them to become full participants in the exploration, perhaps even stirring within them a strange sense of intimacy. Audience members are free to move around the space at any time and are the curators of their own experience.
Juxtaposing the natural scenography of the loft, the organic sunlight, and the artist’s metamorphic dancing body, Ouvre mes yeux explores the codes of a queer identity—one often linked either to superficial entertainment, transactional hypersexualization, or a cathartic spiritual awakening. What are we to do with this wardrobe of sacred costumes?
Ouvre mes yeux marks the first step in a new solo creation cycle in which Charles-Alexis, in his mid-thirties, continues to refine and develop the choreographic bodies of his previous work L’appel des braises (2023), while infusing them with new colors inspired by his recent inner journeys through psychedelic medicinal plants.
Queer and neurodivergent artist Nicholas Bellefleur presents COWORKER, their first solo creation: a physical and sensitive portrait of the modern worker archetype. Through a series of choreographic vignettes, they reveal the tensions between conformity and inner truth, with movement that is both conceptual and athletic. Beneath the costume, emotions build up, yearning to be released. Balancing introspection and performance, this powerful work explores social masks and the journey toward self-liberation.
Magical realism, theatrical, athletic
Empty Phantoms explores the fragile boundaries between self-perception and societal expectations. The piece captures the fleeting, often haunting moments of transition—those “liminal spaces” where identities are questioned, transformed, or lost in the search for authenticity. It reflects the emotional turbulence of breaking free from imposed constraints while unraveling the layers of one’s identity.
Movement, resilience, intimacy