Threshold

Le Patin Libre, whose members are all highly trained skaters, caused a sensation in 2014 with Vertical Influences, a revolutionary display of contemporary dance on ice. “We take full advantage of what makes skating a unique and legitimate art form: the glide”, explains Alexandre Hamel. “The glide allows the disconnection of the body’s displacement in space from its physical movement.” A Le Patin Libre performance is an adrenalin-laced experience. “We use that rush to fuel our choreographic poetry.” The same artistic team—skaters Pascale Jodoin, Jasmin Boivin, Taylor Dilley, Samory Ba and Alexandre Hamel, joined by dramaturg Ruth Little—brings us another gravity-defying show. “Dancers and acrobats have to walk, run, flip, leap, and so on. We, on the other hand, can zoom around without moving a muscle!” It is vertigo in the air to see Le Patin Libre evolve like this. “We use speed to write our choreographic poetry." Bringing together the same team—Pascale Jodoin, Jasmin Boivin, Taylor Dilley, Samory Ba and Alexandre Hamel, not to mention the playwright Ruth Little—, Le Patin Libre promises once again to defy gravity. Threshold is a choreographic exploration of a crucial moment of change and danger. It is both accessible through its athletic virtuosity and significant through its reflections on trauma, transformation and return to life.