MONASTÈRE PHOTO DUMP: Professional Photographers

hello there, you strange wonderful thing

I hope you enjoyed the audience-view peek at the latest update of BARBETTE. Thanks for the comments and feedback you left on the post or messaged me privately with; it's a beautiful feeling to share the continuing evolution of this work with you. Your excitement at some of the changes makes me even more excited!

Today I've got a little more background on the Le Monastère  (where that previous post's BARBETTE was performed) for you: where this organization exists within the ecosystem of the Montréal circus scene, and where it sits with the ecosystem of my own memories and dreams.

And accompanying today's words is a kaleidoscope of images gathered together from what professional photographers shared with the cast and production over the 2 weeks of shows.

I love seeing how these costumes & character variations came alive in this space, this lighting, with the new artistic premises I was field-testing.

Do you have any favourites?!

I've got a few questions for you at the very end of today's post for you to sound off in the comments about, if you feel like indulging my curiosity!

More from me soon -- until then, stay strange & wonderful!

XO - ess

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i've been attending cabarets at Le Monastère for about half a decade.

In my earliest years of Montréal circus pilgramages I'd flock to the Centre St-Jax on a warm Friday or Saturday night with other circus friends to see what was on offer that edition.

For two hours, my rapt gaze would be trained on the bodies balancing, swirling, and leaping through the air before me, shadows dancing between the wooden cherubs dotting the ribs of the ceiling arches.

These cabarets came to represent the professional standard I needed to reach, in my mind, for a very long time: the precision of the artists, their beautiful lines, technique that my beginner's-heart ached to one day replicate in the air, the musicality and thoughtfulness of their well-rounded, well-researched numbers.

Le Monastère runs several of these cabarets every year: there's one in the spring, one in the fall, and usually a couple in the summertime – lining up with the Montréal Complètement Cirque international festival that takes over the city for two weeks in July, and again in August, when Montréal celebrates Pride month, for the Fierté edition.

A host (who is usually a clown) MCs the event and links together 8 performances of varying disciplines and styles. Numbers are generally no longer than 6 minutes in length and are presented 'in the round'. The audience is seated at low, candle lit tables all around the perimeter of a square, 4-foot-high stage.

these events are also places where you rub shoulders with scores of other artists: beginner or professional; unknown or instagram-famous; freshly jetlagged from a distant corner of the globe, or directly arrived from the Cirque du Soleil IHQ where they were onboarding for a new show contract.

Artistic directors, producers, and casting people are often in attendance, too – though you might not know just from looking at them. This gathering of artists and professionals made Le Monastère  one of the key places I began to learn what my professional peers regarded as good work.

Navigating between the tightly packed candle-lit tables during an intermission can be like immersing yourself in a sound bath of hyper-specific Montréal circus taste: of what technique someone's more-trained eyes considered to be crisp or sloppy; what aesthetics and movements are considered fresh or tired; what kinds of virtuosity are valued or disregarded.

In those earliest attendances, I listened and watched the crowd and artists around me closely. I’d notice small shared glances across tables and tiny eye rolls; I’d parse the subtle distinctions between hmm's that meant 'I'm impressed' and the mm's that barely disguised disapproval of a clichéd gesture or overused music choice.

In the first few years I hoarded these fragments of evaluation as pieces of a compass I needed to assemble for myself: words that might point the way toward the kind of act I wanted to make, and the kind of circus artist I wanted to be recognized as by my peers.

Over the years, other places, other mentors, other kinds of circus, and other kinds of art have informed my style and diversified my tastes as an artist. It's changed the way that I see the work shared on Monastère stages: it's one kind of circus that I love to watch; but it is not the best or the only kind of circus that is good.

like many other arts organizations right now (locally or further afoot), these cabarets face mounting pressures from multiple sides as time goes on.

A shift away from 'riskier' programming towards sure-fire, tried-and-true, high-level work is one way institutions and organizations are trying to weather the ongoing storms of funding cuts and slashed budgets. In general, the show-going Canadian public has less and less disposable income as our housing & economic crisis deepens. It's harder than ever to sell tickets.

 Even the biggest presenters in dance and theatre in Toronto have increasingly moved towards programming works that the general public might be more familiar with or enjoy, over works from new or experimental artists (e.g. the National Ballet or CanStage leaning towards remounting classic works vs. commissioning new works from emerging or experimental artists).

I feel like I've seen similar echoes happening in Montréal circus programming in recent years.

In earlier iterations of Monastère cabarets the tone and focus of the programming was sometimes more exploratory: it wasn't unheard of to catch a seasoned aerialist trying out a new ground act, or a juggler feeling out an experimental clown-crossover idea. But in recent years the cabaret casting has taken on a tighter, high-polish angle.

The producers / casting directors for Le Monastère can afford to be intensely selective about the numbers presented there: Montréal is regarded as one of the circus capitols of the world, and there are few places in the world like it when it comes to both the volume and calibre of artists formed in its icy (or boiling hot, depending on the season) crucible.

For the past few years, a good part of each cabaret's cast is often a mix of newly-graduated and more-seasoned artists who come out of the École Nationale de Cirque, international artists who are on small tour breaks from their solo spots with a Cirque du Soleil chapiteau, or international performers who have become synonymous with their chosen discipline's vocabulary or style.

As Le Monastère has matured, it has remained a place to showcase local and international contemporary talent. Now, one of its challenges is to maintain a reputation for quality and balance in its programming that will satisfy both the spectacle-hungry general public and the highly-circus-educated eyes of the industry professionals anchored in the community that regularly attend.

just another cabaret? not quite

It's no secret that Montréal is a 'company town': many artists come here to study or train in hopes of being hired into shows by Cirque du Soleil, Les Septs Doigts, Cirque Eloize, Machine de Cirque, Flip Fabrique, and others.

Year-round, the city is packed full of hopeful, gritty artists who are in the process of slogging their way towards the completion of their Big Solo Number™️ to use as their calling card to one of the Companies™️.

Let's say you get hired into one of these companies: will you be performing your exact number  that you spent months (or years) designing?

Maybe. Sometimes it works out that way.

But other times, your number just serves as proof that you've got the [technical & artistic] goods; ultimately it could be a place of departure for a director or choreographer to create something new on, and with, your body.

By contrast, the cabaret or varieté model (like Le Monastère) is a presentation environment where an artist might present their number exactly as they designed it: with their chosen costume, chosen music, chosen emotional tone.

There are very few events in Montréal that run in this style. It's more common here to see short programs or full-length shows presented under the banner of a company (or solo artist).

There are even fewer places in the city that physically have the technical requirements (ceiling height; riggable beams; floor space; lighting; and so on) that can stage high-level circus acts.

The Monastère stage is a unique production in many ways compared to the rest of the Montréal scene – and an important one.

over the years, I've watched friends of mine (or artists I'd see at the training spaces who I deeply admired) step out of the crowd and onto the stage at LE MONASTÈRE:

• Whether it was for contortion – 
  
  Like my friend Alex Paviost, whose contortion research on aerial apparatuses blows most of anything I've seen elsewhere out of the water;
  




• Or aerial silks:
  
  Like veteran Tanya Burka – I didn't have luck tracking down her silks performance at Le Monastère from a few summers ago, but I did track down one of her 2013 performances in Cirque du Soleil's QUIDAM.
  
  Or Antoine Boissereau, who I watched at the cabaret shortly after he graduated from ENC; I saw him replicate his incredible performance again half a year later at Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain in Paris;
  




• Or aerial hoop:
  
  Like Aisling ni Cheallaigh, who performed last summer and blew everyone's minds with this number that went on to be presented at the Firco Festival in Spain.
  
  Or, in the currently-running Fierté edition, one of my INTERVIEWS ZINE artists – the freshly-graduated Sarah Norden, on aerial hoop* (*Sarah's YEAR ONE interview will be appearing in Volume II of THE INTERVIEWS, which is currently on my editing desk / in assembly-mode! Coming soon);
  




• Or aerial straps:
  
  Like Augustín Rodriguez-Beltram, who performed at Le Monastère on a very-rocky-looking free-standing rig (I think that was the last year before they got a gigantic truss system for their outdoor shows), and then again a year or two later at –you guessed it– Cirque de Demain.
  
  

Le Monastère is a Montréal circus mainstay that occupies a unique and important place within the broader landscape of contemporary circus and performing arts on the island.

From the industry side, it's a space where a rigorous level of technical and artistic standards is expected and upheld. And for the public, it's a space that offers consistent wonder, spectacle, beauty, and daring in the heart of downtown – an attractive and accessible space for circophiles and non-circophiles alike (who otherwise have to trek 45-50 minutes north on public transit to watch shows at La TOHU, on the outskirts of the city).

I've taken many circus friends and non-circus friends, new friends and old friends, to Monastère cabarets now.

I have no doubt I'll continue to take people to Monastère cabarets in years to come, too. 

I have the additional delight of knowing that some of you, lovely patrons, have made epic treks from far and wide to see this very cabaret! (you know who you are! ;) ) 

Thank you for sharing in the beauty and excitement of these spaces and these events with me – whether it's been through reading things like this post and cheering me on, or chiming in with your own reactions and insights, over the years; or if you've made it out to one of these shows; or if you're feeling inspired to pin something like this on your vision board for adventures in the future!

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thanks for reading

• If you're a circus artist or performing artist, are there spaces (or events, or productions) in your city (or that have come to your city) that have been like this, for you?
• What's your 'Le Monastère' been over the course of your own artistic practice or career?
• And if you're not a circus or performing arts person, is there something in your life or career that has embodied this kind of evolving standard for your own work? Been a kind of 'north star' for you as you've grown in experience or ability? (secular or religious; institutional or informal; annual or perennial; etc!)