Choreographer and writer

RICHARD TREMBLAY holds a doc­tor­ate in the dance per­for­mance arts and received post­grad­u­ate train­ing in phonol­o­gy from the Depart­ment of Lin­guis­tics at the Uni­ver­sité de Mon­tréal (1981 – 84). He authored a mono­graph and books on Kathakali and dance, wrote in the Indi­an The­atre Jour­nal and recent­ly pub­lished one nov­el. One amongst the found­ing mem­bers of Le Regroupe­ment des Pro­fes­sion­nels de la danse du Québec in the ear­ly 1980s, Richard Trem­blay has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly been cre­at­ing for the stage since the 1970s, in con­tact at that time with the New Amer­i­can The­atre and the the­atri­cal exper­i­ments at the fore­front of the Euro­pean the­atre revival. He direct­ed his ‘chore­o­graph­ic the­atre’ reper­toire at Téâ­tram until 1981. These ear­ly works were pre­sent­ed at the Nation­al School of Dra­ma in New Del­hi and at the 1977 New The­atre Fes­ti­val in Bal­ti­more (Unit­ed States) under the direc­tion of Philip Arnoult and Her­bert Blau. He is a recog­nised prac­ti­tion­er of the Kathakali dance, in which he trained with the mas­ters of the South Indi­an Kala­man­dalam school (1975 – 81). In 1988, he was com­mis­sioned by this insti­tu­tion to cre­ate the Ili­ad (The Wrath of Achilles) in Kathakali under the direc­tion of renown Gopi Ashan and Vazhen­ga­da Vijayan. This sem­i­nal pro­duc­tion includ­ing fif­teen major artists in dance and the the­atre arts was pre­sent­ed in India and made its world pre­miere in Sin­ga­pore (2000). Richard Trem­blay found­ed his con­tem­po­rary dance com­pa­ny Danse Kalashas in 1990, where he put on the major part of his chore­o­graph­ic reper­toire, includ­ing Of Mice and Oth­er Sim­i­lar Devices, the company’s found­ing work. His cre­ation Prayer for a Rope, a Pope and a Rogue (2003) made head­lines with its six dancers, fea­tur­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions in scenog­ra­phy and light­ing by Jean-Guy Lecat, for­mer pro­duc­tion asso­ciate of Peter Brook, and in per­cus­sion music by Bruno Paquet in a com­po­si­tion for five musi­cians under the direc­tion of Shawn Mativet­sky. His recent stage projects and research include a recon­struc­tion of a 1916 Kathakali per­for­mance, on the basis of a research he has car­ried out in the field over sev­er­al years.