© Michael Slobodian 2016

ANNE PLAMONDON is a choreographer, performer, teacher and curator.

After more than 20 years as a performer on international stages, she makes her debut as a choreographer in 2012. With the complicity of theater director Marie Brassard, she creates her first two solos The Same Eyes as Yours (2012) and Night Mechanics (2017). In 2018, she founds Anne Plamondon Productions in order to carry out her own creative projects and generate new artistic collaborations. Since then, Anne has multiplied her collaborations with important institutions such as the Fall for Dance North Festival in Toronto where she creates the duet Counter Cantor (2018) with the renowned choreographer Emma Portner, as well as Fiddle Embrace (2018), a piece for eighteen students of the Ryerson School of Dance. She has also created works for Alberta Ballet and Arts Umbrella Dance in Vancouver. In the summer of 2020, she choreographs and performs in the short film Espaces vitaux (semi-finalist at the Paris Play Festival), which is part of the project "Une solitude partagée" initiated by the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur.

In 2021, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal invites him to choreograph Vanishing Mélodies, a large-scale piece set to the music of Patrick Watson, alongside Brazilian choreographer Juliano Nuñes. The following year, after several postponements due to the Covid-19 pandemic, she presents and performs Only You (2020), her latest duet with dancer James Gregg, at Usine C, the National Arts Centre and Harbourfront Centre, to finally tour the show in Quebec in Fall 2022.

Her latest work, La voix qui conduit, is still in progress. A first version was presented at the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur in August 2022.

By focusing on subjects that resonate deeply with her, she aims to create works that leave a lasting impression, both through their virtuosity and their sensitive authenticity.

Training and international career

Anne Plamondon is trained at the National Ballet School of Canada and the Banff Centre for the Arts before graduating from the École Supérieure de ballet du Québec in 1994. She immediately joins Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and performs several works from the classical repertoire, including those by George Balanchine and Fernand Nault. The following year, she leaves Quebec to continue her career with the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 in Holland (1995 - 1998), and then with the Gulbenkian Ballet in Portugal (1998 - 2000). During this period, she performs the works of more than thirty choreographers including Jiří Kylián, Hans Van Manen, Johan Inger, Gideon Obarzanek, Angelin Preljocaj and Itzik Galili. She also creates leading roles in works by Rui Horta, Patrick Delcroix and Pieter de Ruiter - as well as in the acclaimed hit Sad Case, by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, choreographers in residence at Nederlands Dans Theater.

Return to Montreal

Returning to Montreal in 2000, Anne works with several contemporary choreographers, including Jean Grand-Maitre. She dances in the reconstruction of Fifteen Heterosexual Duets by choreographer James Kudelka, produced by Coleman Lemieux & Cie, and appeares in the book Reconstructing Fifteen Heterosexual Duets by photographer Michael Slobodian.

Between 2007 and 2015, she collaborates with Crystal Pite and her company Kidd Pivot, contributing to the pieces Lost Action, Fault, The You Show, and the Olivier Award-winning duet A Picture of You Falling. That same year, she participates in the choreographic creation and performs in Triptych by company Les 7 doigts de la main - a meeting between circus and dance in the works of Marie Chouinard, Victor Quijada and Marcos Morau. In 2016, she collaborates in the creation of the show Corps Amour Anarchie by company PPSDanse, celebrating the French poet Léo Ferré.

On screen, she stars in the short films Small Explosions That Are Yours to Keep, Secret Service, and Gravity of Center, directed by Victor Quijada and Thibaut Duverneix. In collaboration with director Micah Meisner, Anne choreographs and performs in Red Shoes, winner of a Golden Sheaf Award at the Yorkton Film Festival in 2010.

The RUBBERBAND years

Between 2002 and 2015, Anne works with choreographer Victor Quijada within RUBBERBANDance Group, first as a performer, then as co-artistic director from 2006 to 2015. Quijada's bold inventiveness, combining hip-hop and b-boying, the fluidity and precision of classical ballet and the sensibility of contemporary dance, has a fundamental impact on Anne's journey. Their powerful affinity as dance partners fosters their close collaboration and Anne quickly becomes the company's signature figure. Between 2007 and 2011, Plamondon and Quijada are artists-in-residence at Place des Arts' 5e Salle, where they create the memorable duet AV/INPUT/OUTPUT. Within the company, Anne participates in the creation of more than ten works for the stage and three short films. She is also deeply involved in the development of the RUBBERBAND Method, which she now teaches around the world.

Passing on to the next generation

Having at heart the issues of transmission to the next generation of dancers, Anne is involved as a teacher in several training institutions - l'École Supérieur de Ballet du Québec, l'École de Danse de Québec, l'École de Danse Contemporaine de Montréal and Arts Umbrella Dance (B.C.) - and has been acting as delegated curator for dance at the Domaine Forget de Charlevoix since 2018.

"I am driven by curiosity, by a quest for meaning, for revelation of my own truth and that of others. This quest is at the heart of my process - it ignites my inner fire.

Strange paradox: when I dance, my body takes over, gets restless or gives way, reveals its complexities, driven by the vibrations of music or a troubling inner state.

When that happens, I feel my dancing in its truest, purest form. From time to time, I achieve this state of grace, fleeting and mysterious. It is to find those moments of grace that I dance, again and again."

Anne Plamondon, May 2018

Anne Plamondon Productions receives the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the administrative support of Diagramme - gestion culturelle.