Dressed in dance company merch and beige clogs, Jeremy Raia walks up to the stage with poise and expertise, giving directions and cues to the stagehands blowing confetti. A few moments pass. A dancer pops out from backstage, proudly extending a pair of hairy monster-feet slippers, to which Jeremy reacts with: “That’s perfect; make her wear them.”
Vivora is a contemporary dance program put together by La Compagnie de Danse Contemporaine du Québec (CDCQ), comprising three choreographic pieces that premiered on Friday, May 2nd at Theatre de la Providence. Jeremy, the company’s artistic director and choreographer, “made up” the name ‘Vivora’ to portray the joy of experiencing life’s firsts and the journey of self-discovery.
“There are all these first experiences as a young person. There’s the first love, and the first death of a family member or a pet, there’s the first time you move, the first time you go to a new school, and although it could be a struggle, it’s this beautiful thing that’s making us find our colours, our shades,” says Jeremy.
He uses confetti to demonstrate how the dancers find their colours and stand out from one another. Wearing identical white dresses at the beginning of the piece, the cast sprints through a cloud of confetti, returning in rotation to the stage, each now dressed in their respective colours of the rainbow.
Jeremy did not create CDCQ. The company was founded in 2020, and Jeremy claims he was simply “in the right place at the right time.” Jera Wolfe, a previous choreographer, needed help with creating pieces for the youth company and Veronica Thomas, the director of the Préville Fine Arts Center where CDCQ is situated, reached out to Jeremy. He was offered the position of artistic director after the founder left to pursue different things.
For two years now, he embodied this role, giving his all to passionate teenagers. He was granted a sort of “carte-blanche” and was determined to make the most of it by creating a space where younger dancers between the age of 13 and 20 could easily focus on school while also having the possibility of training somewhere that greatly resembles a professional environment.
The dance company looks for teenagers with a certain amount of experience in any style of dance at a higher-level to facilitate the integration into the professional world. A few members have agreed on the complexity of balancing dance with their academic lives and social lives. Most consider CDCQ as their social scene, for the dancers are a tight knit group of girls, three out of six of them being related.
CDCQ’s dancers aren’t the only ones challenged by the team; the choreographers, too, experience a whole new environment–working with teenagers turns out to be vastly different than working with the professionals they are used to. Still,after choreographing with these girls, it became a mutual journey of self-exploration and growth.
Jessica Joy Muszynski—one of the choreographers—had never created with pre-professional dancers before and found the experience enlightening, given that they weren’t familiar with each other. “We’re at a different stage of life. I work with dancers who know me. They know how I want them to move; they know the choices I’m going to make,” explains Jessica.
“Jeremy is like the heart and soul of CDCQ; he walked in and had a vision of what it could be,” says Jaqueline Subirana, one of the dancers. He brings laughter and connection in his classes by making sarcastic jokes and paying attention to each of his dancer’s needs and lives. “Theres so much love for and from Jeremy, and I think it’s obvious in both the piece and when we are working with him,” she explains.
