Tuque et Capuche [TeC]
Tuque et Capuche is a nucleus of performing arts around which artists gravitate under the direction of Delphine Véronneau.
The company focuses on contemporary dance, but also utilizes film, theatre, and music, offering a unique artistic approach that allows artists and spectators to meet on a bridge of emotion and reflection.
The singularity of Tuque et Capuche is based on the inclusion of different forms of performing art in its creations, allowing for a broad-based dialogue with the public and privileged access to the very heart of the creation and its creators.
Drawing from several years of research, collaborations, and creations, Tuque et Capuche oversees several projects with the constant desire to look critically at its own practice and to honour the oldest function of art; sharing.
Artistic Approach
Tuque et Capuche's artistic approach is based on two things; a multidisciplinary approach that encourages the blossoming of poetry, and a spiral method of creation that fosters an intrinsic link between the subject and the artist.
The use of different forms of performing art allows for the development of poetic language. This is fundamental to Tuque et Capuche's approach, as it stems from the conviction that poetry is the closest thing to reality. The poetic can encompass beauty, ugliness, contradiction, emotion, and decay in a jumbled fashion. Although the structure, cause-effect, and re-composition of events in a linear fashion is absolutely beneficial and vital for the human being, the fact remains that life, and events relating to it, are rarely truly linear. Life is full of images and sensations sent out in puffs and in disorder. Tuque et Capuche strives to create moments in which the different performing arts, through their symbiosis, provoke moments of poetic reality and create an artistic environment through music, movement, and speech that allow the spectators the possibility of recognising the highly emotional and tense state of the multi-absorbent human being.
In addition to the use of different art forms, Tuque et Capuche's choreographic language is based on the principle of a spiral. This spiral supports the blossoming of a subject or theme in an organic way. A to-and-fro between a worked statement and the revelation of the statement through work gives way to a precise, tailor-made physical language that is constructed with the artists involved in the project. Through the very gesture of creation, the use of performer-creators throughout the process allows for the discovery of the theme to be developed. This way of doing things also allows access to the individual sensitivity of the artists on stage which, according to Tuque et Capuche's artistic vision, encourages the living aspect of art, and by extension enriches the experience of the spectator. Through this approach, Delphine Véronneau aims not only to present an artistic statement on stage, but also to leave traces of the creative process so that the spectator can experience an emotion and, if she or he wishes, to question the act of creation itself.
Tuque et Capuche
The Story Behind the Name
One day, during rehearsal in the UQAM studios,
when we were still students,
the two artists I was working with came in,
a little annoyed with life,
releasing an overflow of stress from outside pressures.
I didn’t say anything.
They went through the whole rehearsal
one with a toque and the other
with a hood on.
I didn't say anything.
I understand the defenses of the super-involved.
I understand the discreet revolt of the soft-hearted.
And I thought they were beautiful.
The name Tuque et Capuche (toque and hood) stuck.
It is the revolt of the soft-hearted.
