Artistic statement
Lilith & Cie’s activities reflect our artistic process which is embodied through being rather than doing. Aurelie Pédron’s work nurtures forces that reorient audiences in their perceptions and role within art, society and more broadly, their coexistence in living. Care – the underlying principle of benevolent attention to and curiosity about something or someone – feeds our processes and artworks.
These values create a choreographic paradigm shift from which emerge intentionally open and evolving forms. Performers and audiences build the artwork interdependently, complimentarily – and it becomes a relational site where everyone is an engaged protagonist.
Sensitive to the living systems we inhabit and the structural stakes necessary to their robustness, Aurélie primarily crafts choreography between the bodies, in the interstices. She honours pathways and is curious about processes that shift our gaze, thoughts, bodies or intentions in regard to an event, rather than the event in and of itself.
The body, the encounter and social or cultural differences (or any other difference) are at the heart of Aurélie’s artistic process. Working with people having atypical life experiences by White, Western standards is one of the company’s foundational values. As nonstandard paths resonate with her own, she recognizes our complex embodied histories as fertile ground. Sharing resilience through audacious artistic forms allows for new ways of considering existence and our participation in it.
Aurélie Pedron
Aurélie Pedron founded her company Lilith & Cie in 2013, creating sites for her installation performances, where performers’ bodies transmit meaning and reveal invisible images. Presented by Tangente in 2014, ENTRE is a nanoperformance for one audience member at a time, and became the company’s masterwork, earning a Prix de la danse de Montréal, in the revelation category. In 2016, with Danse-Cité, Pedron created LA LOBA, a choreographic journey with 12 live installations in the former Deaf-Blind Institute building in Montréal. ANTICHAMBRE, an immersive work where movement is at the heart of the spectator’s experience, was presented at l’Agora de la danse in 2019. INVISIBLE, a 72-hour uninterrupted dance performance, was programmed in the 2021 OFFTA, coproduced with Montréal Danse and Danse-Cité.
In parallel, fed by a social and inclusive ethic, Aurélie Pedron collaborates with marginalized youth. She created the microperformances RÛE and MARGE (2014–2015) with them, supported by the Montréal-based multidisciplinary artist centre DARE-DARE. In 2016, INDEEP, was a 10-hour performance with 10 blindfolded youth offering a transformative and fascinating performance that confronted our gaze on a social body operating without landmarks and normative codes. DANS LE CŒUR DU HÉRON, initially programmed in the 2020 OFFTA, was created in collaboration with Simiuni Nauya, Inuit sculptor, and presented at the Musée d’art de Rouyn-Nouranda in 2021.
Lilith & Cie is supported by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Arts Council.
Lilith in History
According to legend, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. Banned from the Garden of Eden for standing up to him, and then excluded from History, Lilith has been demonized and associated to darkness.
Her name’s diverse etymologies (Hebrew and Sumerian) relate to night and wind. Under the auspices of this rebellious woman of the shadows, a nighthawk or immaterial goddess of wind, Lilith & Cie invites us to reclaim embodiment, perceive the untellable, and move beyond sensory understanding.