DEMONSTRATION No1
Premiered at Joyce Soho in New York, USA, on March 30th 2001
I am looking at you and talking to you. You are looking at me. I am looking at you looking at me talking to you. I am moving and dancing. I am thinking and looking at myself dancing and getting very absorbed in my own dance. I know that you are watching me while I am thinking all this, and, of course, also when I am moving. I very well suspect that you know that I know that you are watching me thinking and getting absorbed in my dance. It is somewhat indecent. You and I are both looking at this moving body which happens to be mine. There is no end to this.
Martin Belanger
Martin Bélanger casually upends and circumvents the conventions of the stage, toying with them, toying with himself as performer and the response of the audience to that very sense of play, flaunting the whole process of creating a show. That had been apparent in Démonstration no.1.(…) Who is the one talking and dancing? An onstage presence or a mere representation? Fiction or reality? A performative or theatrical manifestation? And what has the audience come to see?
Michele Febvre
Deconstructing a solo as it is performed
« Demonstration no1 set to a Brian Eno variation on the Pachelbel Canon, was that this French Canadian actor turned dancer-choreographer was deconstructing a solo as he performed it. Gradually movement and conceit became one in a fascinating and strangely touching hybrid…»
Jennifer Dunning
The New York Times, New York, Tuesday, April 3rd, 2001
2008
Maison de la Culture Villeray / Montreal, Canada
Centennial Theatre / Lennoxville, Canada
TanzBremen / Bremen, Germany
Pumpenhaus / Munster, Germany
Theatre de Vanves / Vanves, France
2002
Aoyama Round Theater, Dance Biennale Tokyo / Tokyo, Japan
Borderless / Sapporo, Japan
2001
Studio 303 / Montreal, Canada
Joyce Soho / New York, USA