Les Montagnes
A Sensory Encounter at the Square
Dear Friend of TOAF,
We have a very special dance performance commissioned for this summer at Nathan Phillips Square. Marie Lambin-Gagnon has been on our radar for a few years, and when Rui Pimenta suggested her and curated this piece for our dance program, it was an enthusiastic yes.
At Rui’s nudge, a little about our commitment to programming contemporary dance at TOAF.
For years now, we’ve been commissioning new works and restaging existing ones for Nathan Phillips Square. These works have animated the walkways, the podium roof garden, the cascading stairs of the stage, and the spaces in between. Dance has added another layer of poetry to the beauty our visual artists already bring to the square, softening the concrete, threading movement through the Fair and drawing in seasoned dance lovers and curious first-timers alike.
The pieces we’ve staged have all responded to the square’s distinct architecture in ways that surprise us. So many memorable works have been shaped by this place. Each one an invitation: a moment of surprise, intrigue, reflection. This time, Les Montagnes moves up the ramp in the square.
In Marie’s evocative sculptural movement work, bodies become shifting landscapes, solid and soft at once. Learn more about her work below, and mark your calendar for TOAF65, July 10–12.
Happy belated International Dance Day.
anahita & TOAF Team
Marie on Les Montagnes
Les Montagnes is a choreographic and visual work that transforms the body into a shifting landscape, solid yet unstable, and in constant flux. Drawing on sculptural forms and layered fabrics, the performers evoke geological processes of accumulation, erosion, and transformation. Inspired by Iceland’s glaciers, bodies dissolve, submerge, and re-emerge, creating a quiet resilience in which instability becomes a space for adaptation and renewal.
Through contemporary dance, sculptural movement, electronic sound, and layered materials, Les Montagnes invites audiences into a sensory encounter with scale, density, and duration, tracing human fragility against the slow endurance of the natural world.
Rui Pimenta on inviting Marie
“I have long admired Marie’s work as a choreographer, particularly her ability to seamlessly integrate contemporary dance with the formal and conceptual languages of visual art. Operating at the intersection of choreography and visual art, Marie approaches movement with a distinctly sculptural sensibility, along with having a keen eye for colour and unique materials. Her ability to encompass these two practices makes her an especially compelling fit for an event such as the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, which, while grounded in the visual arts, is increasingly invested in creating space for contemporary dance.”
Marie Lambin-Gagnon is a visual artist, choreographer, and dancer whose practice integrates choreography, photography, textiles, and installation. Her work explores the body as a sculptural and perceptual space, engaging with materiality, temporality, and spatial environments.
Recent works include a new solo created in collaboration with Louise Bédard, premiered at the Festival des Faubourgs in Montréal (2025), as well as Still Life, co-presented with SummerWorks, The Citadel / Ross Center for Dance and dance:made in canada/ fait au canada, Still Together, presented at the Toronto Biennial of Art, Confluence (The Bentway), and Body/Landscape (Toes for Dance).
