“'Intimacy interests me... Above all I like to observe someone who doesn't know he's being looked at. I love to witness the moment when acting stops. When I look at you, it is like I am watching a deer in the forest… Victory is something magnificent, but strangely there is something that touches me more in the sight of failure. There is beauty in the image of a shipwreck.”

- Nicolas Cantin

In his ''dancing'' play Grand Singe, Nicolas Cantin's universe imposes its difference and its main characteristics: minimalism, tragicomic humor and meticulous work on the performer's presence. This hybrid presence tells about the encounter of a man and a woman and is a testimony of Cantin’s talent for capturing rifts and human absurdities. A young artist who freely mixes genres, Nicolas Cantin has ventured boldly down the slippery slopes of intimacy. By stretching out time and relying on the extremely intense presence of his performers, he brings to light the dark side of fragility.

 “Grand Singe is grand embroidery—everything is justified, correctly dosed. […]So we are handing out a perfect ten.”

- Eve Lalonde, Df Danse (Translated from French)

“It is truly pleasurable to navigate this strange and spare universe. […] The choreographer is the master of time, combining absurdly overlong parts, breaks and humour with the precision of a watchmaker. And his use of nudity on stage is refreshing in its artistic and human warmth. This is a theatre of the very-fine-almost-nothing, brilliantly directed and played. A great find.”

- Catherine Lalonde, Le Devoir (Translated from French)

“Cantin’s duo for a man and woman is probably the show that managed to pack the

most punch using the most minimal means this year. […] it only ended up fuelling our

already intense emotional reaction to the work.”

- Sylvain Verstricht, Indyish

Trained in clowning and masks, Nicolas Cantin is at the crossroads of many disciplines and puts together works that are refined until only the heart of the matter is left.

Daniel Léveillé Danse is a non-profit organization, whose mission is to support the creation, production and touring of Daniel Léveillé’s artistic projects and to support the development of projects by other artists that will stimulate research and practice in contemporary dance.

What happens when the social mask falls?

When you drop a porcelain cup

Afterwards, you try to glue together the pieces

But whatever you do

There is always a part that is missing

Do not hide behind the curtains

We are both the same

We are two broken porcelain cups

Do you see what I’m saying or am I speaking into emptiness?

In Grand Singe, a man and a woman share the stage. Despite themselves, they personify a couple. . . And yet this duo depicts two people who simply cross paths. Their actions repeat like an infernal routine. The eruption of the living on stage consists, paradoxically, of emptying rather than filling the space: of quite simply allowing an action to live on stage and giving it time to breathe. Quite the reverse of constructing or building up, it is rather a question of taking away, undoing, extracting, detaching, stepping back: of allowing things to come to pass on their own by granting them “time”.