Lara Kramer

Anchored in this world and orbiting a universe beyond, a lone performer unfolds memories on stage through rhythmic scores. For Gorgeous Tongue, Lara Kramer invites Nêhiyaw/Métis dance artist Jeanette Kotowich to embody stories, dreams, and songs that stem from Lara’s Anishinaabe lineage. Entering Kramer’s artistic constellation, Kotowich performs multiple movement sequences to embrace the past and usher in a new world. Gorgeous Tongue is a celebration of Indigenous transmission, transformation, and futurity.

Born out of two artists’ chemistry and kinship, this solo oscillates between the need for regulation and the discovery of a new appetite. Following Windigo (2018, FTA) and Them Voices (2021 and 2022, FTA), Lara Kramer explores the need and drive for pleasure and the strength of instinctual connections.

"Somewhere amongst all these strands, we are weaving our imagination.
Dreaming for hard loving and future journeys. Transporting in soft gorgeous
tongue.” ~Lara Kramer

Conceived, Created, Set, Costumes and Sound Design: Lara Kramer

Lara Kramer is a performer, choreographer and multidisciplinary artist of mixed Oji-Cree and Mennonite heritage. She lives and works in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyaang/Montreal. Her work, which is grounded in intergenerational relations and knowledge and the impacts of the Indian Residential Schools of Canada, has been presented across North America, Europe, Australia/Oceania and Martinique.

Kramer’s relationship to experiential practice and the creative process of performance, sonic development and visual design is anchored in the embodiment of experiences such as dreams, memories, knowledge, and reclamation. Her work brings the audience into the art world, where stillness and silence are knowledge, where the experience of art acts as a mode of transportation into daydreams, imagining, creation, and possibility.

She has received numerous accolades among which the Canada Council for the Arts’ Jacqueline-Lemieux Prize. Lara has participated in several residencies including Indian Residential School Museum of Canada in Portage la Prairie in 2008 and Dancemakers Artist in Residency from 2018-2021. In 2021, Lara joined the MAI as an associate artist and programming curator for the MAI’s 25th anniversary season. Lara Kramer is a Center de Création O Vertigo – CCOV Associate Artist since 2021.

Lighting Designer and Technical Director - Jo Vignola

Montreal-based artist Jo Vignola graduated from the scenography program at the École Supèrieure de Théâtre in 2021. Influenced by her previous studies in anthropology (2016) and biochemistry/molecular medicine (2011-2013), she is interested in creation that links art and science. In her search for a contemporary theater, she works closely with new technologies and the dramaturgy of video and sound images. Recipient of the Claude F. Lefebvre prize from the Fondation de soutien aux arts de Laval in 2021, she undertook her first original creation around biopolitics and anxiety disorder the same year. She also collaborates on several projects as set, lighting, sound and video designer.

Performer: Jeanette Kotowich

Jeanette Kotowich is from Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan and currently resides on the ancestral and unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ/, and Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories (Vancouver). Kotowich creates contemporary dance that reflects Nêhiyaw/Métis cosmology and Indigenous futurism. Her recent works Kwe and Kisiskâciwan have been presented in Canada and Australia. During the pandemic, Kotowich created CO-VIDS, a series of short experimental dance films. She has been artist-in-residency at the NAC Indigenous Theatre and The Dance Centre and is now Artistic Associate at Raven Spirit Dance.