ODE
Compagnie Catherine Gaudet (Montreal)
Coming on the heels of choreographer Catherine Gaudet’s astounding Les jolies choses (The Pretty Things), the company’s new work ODE channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation/exploration of group-think conformity and cultural collapse.
Eleven performers, moving in lockstep formation, chant the word love. Anthemic, at first, but soon spiraling into desperation and chaos. The iron-clad dictum of happiness, derived from therapy-speak, self-help books, new age Ted-talks, bland as pablum and inoffensive to the point of banality, begins to transform into something more disquieting. Relentless positivity as a form of social violence and containment is only one aspect; the work channels multiple interpretations: Incantation, procession, confession, and ultimately a form of secular prayer for a gentler world.
Perfect harmony becomes an ominous signifier of the danger of deviation from sanctioned social norms. Stray but a foot, and destruction awaits. But as the performers enforced unity begins to come apart, voices break, bodies stagger, the endpoint lurches into view. The brutalizing demand for obedience and orthodoxy crushes individual need and expression underfoot. Exhaustion is inescapable, but lingering at the edge is another form of being. Rooted deep in shared struggle, a slender blade of hope emerges, tender as a newborn.
Top image: Compagnie Catherine Gaudet, ODE © Mathieu Doyon.
October 23 & 24, 2026 | 8pm
Vancouver PlayHouse
600 Hamilton Street
Running time: 55 minutes (no intermission)
7:15pm each night in the Upper Lobby
"ODE's ritualistic choreography carries a smoothness within its strong yet subtle movements that one can almost not perceive (...)"
Ruina Acesa
« L'exploit accompli par les interprètes emportera le public. »
JEU Revue de théâtre
2022 winner of the Grand Prix de la danse de Montréal
Catherine Gaudet holds a B.A. and M.A. in contemporary dance from UQAM, and has established herself as a choreographer with a strong, singular signature. Reaching beneath the mask of social convention, she tracks down the jolts of the unconscious and the micromovements in the body that betray the emotions and sensations we try to hide.
Obsessed by the quest for existential truth, she delves into the meanders of the psyche, seeking beauty in contradiction. Her state dance emerges from forces that oppose, constrain and control her flayed-looking characters. Her raw, precise physicality is mingled with a theatricality that subtly combines dramatic tension, a sense of the absurd and black humour.
