Scuse

Oscillating between informal discussion and physical performance, Scuse is a documentary circus piece, during which Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard recounts various events from her childhood and adolescence that have shaped her perception of femininity and sexuality. Through autobiographical fragments, the artist reflects on the impacts of the gender binary on interpersonal relationships.
With this project, Frédérique explores the underlying mechanisms within the sociocultural stigmas associated with gender expression. Do they incite us to adopt behaviors that reiterate relations of domination and sexual violence, and this, in spite of ourselves?
Frédérique Cournoyer Lessard is a filmmaker and circus artist who seeks to develop a dramaturgical style that combines the abstraction of physical movement with realistic narratives, both on stage and on screen. Often politically engaged and feminist, her works are invested in the intimate resonance of sociopolitical contexts within bodies.
Having studied the aerial hoop at the National Circus School of Montreal and film production at Concordia University, Frédérique works with circus techniques and gestures not as a tool for representing a subject, but as the active engine of a narrative, as a catalyst of states or as a refuge from lived experiences.
After developing her dramaturgical vision through various films (Pas, Rue de la Victoire, Coconut and Fine) and deepening her relationship with aerial hooping as an acrobat, Scuse is Frederique’s first live art piece as an author-performer.