MAGNIFICAT & The Rite of Spring

Performing Arts Season 2026/2027

MAGNIFICAT – Tänzer*innen mit dem Rücken zur Kamera bewegen sich synchron in hautfarbenen Anzügen und Hüten vor blauem Hintergrund.

MAGNIFICAT and The Rite of Spring combine ritualistic music and radical choreography. Marie Chouinard understands the co-presence of bodies as an energetic structure of community and transcendence – intense, untamed and timeless.

Two iconic works, two musical worlds, one distinctive signature: in this evening, Marie Chouinard brings together spirituality, physicality and radical presence. Both choreographies are rooted in ritualistic music: MAGNIFICAT as a Christian hymn of praise, The Rite of Spring as an evocation of archaic sacrificial rites. Together, they present Chouinard as a pioneer of contemporary dance – aesthetically confrontational and untamed.

In MAGNIFICAT, twelve members of the company move in skin-toned briefs and halo-like headpieces, forming expansive group sequences as well as intimate trios, duets and solos. Chouinard translates the classical motifs of Bach’s music into an excessive physicality: song becomes movement, power and submission, and jubilation and ecstasy unfold in a forceful and ironic visual language that shows the dissolution of boundaries and at the same time forms community.

The Rite of Spring is Chouinard’s first choreography to take a musical score as its point of departure. From Stravinsky’s driving music, she develops a work that celebrates the individual while making the collective palpable. Solos take centre stage; every movement expresses vital energy, every body holds a secret. Time stretches, everything happens at once, as if Chouinard were choreographing the moment immediately after life first came into being.

Between the early The Rite of Spring (1993) and the most recent MAGNIFICAT (2025), a wide temporal arc unfolds. What holds it together is a sustained focus on the body as a site of ritual, desire, exhaustion and transcendence. Chouinard’s work is less a narrative of development than an act of insistence: on intensity, on immediacy, on a form of dance that resists all smoothing.

Marie Chouinard was born in Québec and worked for twelve years as a solo dancer before founding the COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD in 1990. Since then, her works have been presented internationally and have entered the repertoires of major institutions. Alongside her choreographic practice, she works as a director, author and visual artist. Her life’s work has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Canadian Governor General’s Performing Arts Award.

Artistic Team

MAGNIFICAT

Marie Chouinard – Choreography

Johann Sebastian Bach, The Magnificat BWV 243, performed by La Chapelle Royale (instrumental ensemble) and Collegium Vocale Gent (choir), conducted by Philippe Herreweghe; Recording used with the permission of PIAS Recordings – Music

Michael Baboolal, Adrian W.S. Batt, Julianna Bryson, Justin Calvadores, Rose Gagnol, Valeria Galluccio, Béatrice Larouche, Luigi Luna, Carol Prieur, Sophie Qin, Jérôme Zerges – Dancers

Marie Chouinard – Lighting and Set Design, Costumes, Make-up

35 min

The Rite of Spring

Marie Chouinard – Concept, Choreography, Artistic Direction, Lighting

Music: Signatures sonores, Rober Racine, 1992; The Rite of Spring (1913), Igor Stravinsky, arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., publisher and copyright owner

Michael Baboolal, Adrian W.S. Batt, Justin Calvadores, Rose Gagnol, Valeria Galluccio, Béatrice Larouche, Luigi Luna, Carol Prieur, Sophie Qin, Clémentine Schindler, Ana Van Tendeloo, Jérôme Zerges – Dancers

Liz Vandal – Costumes

Zaven Paré – Props

Jacques-Lee Pelletier – Make-up

Daniel Éthier – Hairstyles

35 min

Touring Team

Paige Culley – Rehearsal Director

Martin Coutu – Tour Manager

Félix Lefebvre – Technical Director, Stage Manager

A Compagnie Marie Chouinard production

The Compagnie Marie Chouinard wishes to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.

With the support of the Québec Government Office in Berlin

Next date:

• Date Wednesday, 09/December/2026 19:30 ( 1 more date )
• Venue Haus der Berliner Festspiele - Große Bühne
• Address Schaperstraße 24, 10719 Berlin-Wilmersdorf