Carol Prieur

Dance

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Biography

Carol Prieur started her career with Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers. She has worked with various Canadian choreographers and has participated in the touring production of Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault’s Joe.  Grants permitted her to pursue her studies in New York, Europe and India, where she was initiated into Kalarypayattu, an Indian martial art form.  She has been a dance performer for the Compagnie Marie Chouinard since 1995.  Over the years she has had the opportunity to participate in various projects with creators and artists such as Bill Coleman, Charmaine Leblanc, Isabelle Hayeur, Anne Troake, Tony Chong, and Sabrina Reeves.

In 2003, Carol received the Moving Pictures Festival of Dance on Film and Video Award for Best Performance for her interpretation in Marie Chouinard’s film, Cantique no. 1, in Toronto. In 2010, Carol received the award for the female Dancer of the year from Tanz magazine, and in 2014, Carol was awarded with the honour of being Dance Performer of the Year in Montreal, Canada.

Over the years of being a performer, I am often asked to be an open vessel to communicate various life realities, emotions and states of being. In order to achieve such places of revelation in performance, I need to access a non-judgmental state of being. Continuum connects me to an open-minded state of abandonment, allowing me as a dancer to become a vehicle for communication, for making what is very personal visible.

Continuum in my life

For approximately the past 15 years, I have been using the practice of Continuum in my personal training as a dancer as my preparation before performances and rehearsals. I also have been using continuum as a creative process to develop my own personal language of movement expression. It has become a practice in which I unveil territories within my physicality that may lay dormant, it has become a means to take me beyond my conceived boundaries and limitations. Continuum allows me to connect into my imagination and expand my physical body awareness while tuning into my internal and external environments. Continuum experiences become a form of research to deepen my versatility and undeveloped potential; I move beyond encoded habits and learned patterns.

Continuum explorations allow my mind’s eye to travel the inner landscapes of the human body and it’s tissues. It awakens the consciousness of those areas of the body that may lay dormant, inviting movement through the vibration of sound and breath, opening to the morphing reality of change. Entering into the dimension of fluidity in the present moment, I become acutely tuned to listening to what is called for in the moment.  I follow the fluidity of the unconscious where I am no longer the controller of decisions. Dance becomes not only an artistic practice, but is also a holistic language to move us forward along our evolutionary process as human beings.