Offering creates a meaningful and joyful convergence between the Migration Dance Film Project’s body percussion artists and emerging artists from dance (gigue, contemporary, street) and circus arts. The choreography uses the power of procession in Montreal’s urban borough of Little Burgundy to amplify its storyline of (re)imagined homescape in the era of mid-pandemic. The procession formed by movement artists from across communities weaves its way through urban corridors, neighbourhoods, green spaces — an uncoiled assemblage of nomadic storytellers anchored in the intimate knowledge of individual and shared experiences in unison. Offering imbues movement in stillness within our city and takes refuge in its powerful migratory patterns traced across our urbanscape.

Marlene Millar (Director)

For over 30 years filmmaker Marlene Millar has created screen dance, documentaries and experimental media productions. With a background in design, contemporary dance and filmmaking (BFA Concordia University, Montreal), Marlene pursued graduate filmmaking at the School of Art Institute of Chicago, before she received a Pew Dance Media Fellowship at the University of California (Los Angeles). Millar’s expansive career was honoured at her first solo exhibition, a retrospective of her 30-year practice at Threshold Artspace, UK (2019).

Since 2000, Millar has co-created a critically acclaimed collection of dance media work with Philip Szporer through their production company, MOUVEMENT PERPÉTUEL. Their award-winning films have been broadcast nationally and widely circulated at international festivals and influential exhibition spaces: the 2010 Cultural Olympics, World Exhibition in Shanghai, and a UNESCO tour of Latin America.

Founded in 2014, the MIGRATION DANCE FILM PROJECT series (LAY ME LOW, PILGRIMAGE, MOVE, TRAVERSE, NAVIGATION), produced/directed by Millar and produced/choreographed by Sandy Silva, has garnered over 25 awards internationally. This process-driven continuum comes to life as Millar transposes the choreography to the screen, creating a poignant visual language that reveals the intricacies of these issue-driven, performative stories centred on migration.

Millar’s installation/experimental media works explore alternative forms of screens, capturing metaphoric histories and docu-fiction resonances—notably in the recent video installation WITNESS. Collaborations include: VR project SKELETON CONDUCTOR; stereoscopic 3D installation research project LEANING ON A HORSE, ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS (UCLA/UCSC); LOST ACTION: TRACE, stereoscopic (3D) live-action/animated film co-directed with Szporer (National Film Board of Canada); 1001 LIGHTS, installation co-created with Szporer (Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghai, Jewish Museum of Australia, tour of Germany with Tanzrauschen) and film installations for live performance—TERMINUS and QUARANTAINE 4 x 4 (Société des arts technologiques/SAT) with the RED RABBIT PROJECT and SING JUK SING (Oboro)with visual artist Mary Sui Yee Wong.

Millar is a prolific educator teaching filmmaking workshops across continents at institutes such as Centre Imagine (Burkino Faso), Loikka (Helsinki) and has mentored documentary filmmakers in Iqaluit, Iglooklik, Cambridge Bay and Pangnirtung, Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic.

www.marlenemillar.com

www.migrationdance.com

www.mouvementperpetuel.net

Marlene Millar Director, Writer, Producer
Sandy Silva Writer, Producer
Kathy Sperberg Producer
Sonia Clarke Key Cast
David Cronkite Key Cast
Dominic Desrochers Key Cast
Omar Motion Carter Key Cast
Afia Douglas Key Cast
Issac Endo Key Cast
Hélène Lemay Key Cast
Chloe Hart Key Cast
Louis Roy Key Cast
Sana Hutchison Key Cast
Rachel Hutchison Key Cast
Edai Larobina Key Cast
Kimberly Robin Key Cast
Mathilde Richer Key Cast
Bobby Thompson Key Cast