The 20ᵗʰ FTA: “Re-questioning the meaning of the Americas”

Martine Dennewald — Instead of focusing on the history of the festival, we decided to delve into specific moments and references in our past: the festival’s founding moment and original name, Festival de théâtre des Amériques, and the trips that our founder, Marie-Hélène Falcon, would take to the south. From there, we started to question the very concept of the Americas. What is this enormous territory? How do we name it? Sure, we can say Chile, Brazil, Argentina. But we can also say Zapotec, Quechua, Aymara. In our program, we like to use the name Abya Yala, as the First Peoples call it.

Jessie Mill — Abya Yala references an ancestral reality where current borders didn’t exist. It’s a name that’s been reactivated in the work of Indigenous scholars whose thinking goes beyond the concept of nation-states. When we see a show like Bardaje by Lukas Avendaño, we’re in a truly unprecedented temporal and geographic zone. In the Americas there are a ton of innovative ideas, comparable to Afrofuturism, and these ideas give rise to the profoundly inspiring works we see on stage.

Martine Dennewald — Brazil is incredibly vibrant, artistically. We aren’t trying to represent the whole country, because that would be impossible! But like other major international festivals, we’re aware that this is a moment of incredible openness on Brazilian stages. These works resonate with our audiences. Something’s happening! Janaína Leite, for example, has created a major work that confronts festivalgoers’ gluttonous appetites, Historia do olho, and it has an extremely fun, edgy, risqué aesthetic. That’s a rare thing, because in Latin America that kind of edginess is more often found in modest productions presented on the margins.

Jessie Mill — There is indeed line dancing in Braids & Heritage by Stacey Desiliers and Joshua Colin, and in Slidin' thru by Jeremy Nedd. In Adentro! by Diana Szeinblum, the performers worked from YouTube videos of Argentinian folk dances to see what they say about gender relations, power relations. There’s this uninhibited fusion of choreographic styles that I find quite refreshing. It creates new possibilities for engaging with contemporary dance.

Martine Dennewald — It isn’t a new show and it isn’t very representative of today’s New York scene, but it embodies a certain savoir-faire found in the American experimental scene.

Jessie Mill — The current political climate is what attracted us to this piece. Making Baldwin’s voice ring out at the beginning of the festival seemed completely appropriate in the context of Trumpist America: the piece critiques an American Dream being built at the expense of African-American communities. It’s a message that resonates powerfully today. Speaking of New York, we also have to mention the return of Trajal Harrell with The Romeo. He reassembled his group of superb performers who are fluent in his language, his nonchalance and his extreme precision, and each of them has a very strong individual character. It’s a grand parade of presences introducing themselves to the world. What I really love is that there’s no editorializing anywhere about difference, queerness or art itself. But there’s so much power in those presences that everything that needs to be said, gets said.

Jessie Mill — We’re fascinated by the question of which works can create a strong dialogue with the public and with urban architecture. With the Feria FTA on Esplanade Tranquille, we’re inventing a market, opening a bar, but also staying true to ourselves by offering hospitality and promoting artisans, booksellers, printmakers. Above all, there’s a desire to be fully immersed in the party.

Martine Dennewald — We’re also thrilled to be presenting Clarice Lima’s Bosque in Place des Festivals. The beauty of this project is the use of a shared language that creates a community that’s unique to each city. It says something about Montreal. Bosque also contains a figurative ecological manifesto that really speaks to us: the idea of a forest planted in a hyper-urban space. It’s no coincidence that this project coincides with our day of decolonized ecology.