Rhodnie Désir : for the brave hearted, nothing is impossible!

In just a few days, Rhodnie Désir will present her Symphony of Hearts on the big Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier stage: 11 performers, 2 musicians from RD Créations, and 60 musicians from the Orchestre Métropolitain—conducted by Naomi Woo—will pulse together, interacting with immersive visuals produced by the National Film Board of Canada. This large-scale show was born of a meeting and a song, as Place des Arts’ first-ever Associate Artist tells us.

How long have you been working on Symphony of Hearts?

First came a documentary phase, to learn more about all the possible movements surrounding the heart, the organ and, more broadly, the cardiovascular system. The goal in this phase was to get closer to the human body, the organ, its functioning and movement, to successfully grasp its essence.

On September 20, 2022, I went to the Montreal Heart Institute to meet with 22 specialists. I was put in touch with patient partners, that is, people with cardiovascular disease who were able to verbalize it. Then, I was invited to go conduct additional interviews at the Istituto Cardiocentro Ticino in Lugano, Switzerland. I attended four open-heart surgeries—an incredible opportunity to see the body and the movement of blood flow from the inside. I also interviewed students from Collège Jean-Eudes and my mother, who suffers from several cardiovascular illnesses. The intention was not to say that doctors are all-knowing and that patients are victims—on the contrary, it was rather to highlight the collective nature of these various conversations.

Istituto Cardiocentro Ticino de Lugano. Photo : LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, 2023.

Next, I went into the studio and shared this information with my design collaborators and the performers. From one theme to the next, we built the work organically. The composition was done with Jorane and Engone Endong, who is a beatmaker or rhythmic composer and sound designer. He is the one who shapes the space, taking us to a hospital or immersing us in a heart that is beating too fast. I had a look at the scores this morning and the number of beats per minute (BPM) corresponds to heartbeats… it is a rhythm. Finally, the last step was to bring everything together in rehearsals.

Shown: Jorane, Rhodnie Désir et Engone Endong. Photo credit: Kevin Calixte, 2023.

How did this idea come about? Did you know it would be a large-scale show?

I work instinctively and somatically. I don’t create a work without having a song that comes to mind. I often compose and perform these songs that are inserted into the musical soundtrack. I collaborated with Jorane, who composed the symphonic music. I would show up with a recording on my phone and it would inspire a melody for her.

The idea for Symphony of Hearts came to me after meeting Yannick Nézet-Séguin as part of a panel discussion at Place des Arts. We both expressed the idea of wanting to work together without having a project in hand. That same evening, I was folding clothes like all moms do, and an idea suddenly came to me, making my heart race because of its sheer scope. The name was very clear from the beginning—it has never changed—as was the first song that followed.

Initially, I imagined a huge show with 150 artists, outdoors, in the Quartier des spectacles. I almost always dream up big-picture projects. I had to find someone capable of taking on such a big project without being intimidated by its scale. Pierre Des Marais and Danse Danse have this ability to help artists propel themselves even further, even when they don’t realize they’ve reached a certain point.

The documentary approach is central to everything you do. Why is it important?

It’s fundamental because I do not create for myself, I create to leave a legacy that will serve others. We are inseparable from everything that surrounds us and from what has preceded us. I am inspired by this connection to the ancestral. One might think that it’s only about the past, but contemporaneity includes ancestral notions through people who carry memories of the past and adapt them to build our “current” contemporary time. The ancestral is also an interconnection with nature, the sacred, the spiritual, human beings, the alliance of knowledge and, above all, the oral tradition, which transcends time. So, why not let it inspire a documentary-choreography?

In Symphony of Hearts, you draw a parallel between the faults of the heart and the faults of society. Is this a political message?

Initially, the main idea was to link social faults and faults in the cardiovascular system. Today, I would make more of a parallel between the different pulsations of the heart and emotional pulsations.

In terms of social fault lines, that’s not all the work is about, but I do find that there is a lot of decay in the world. It is a privilege to perform a show or to be able to sit in a room and watch it. While I’m doing this, I have friends in Haiti who are experiencing chaos and trauma. To talk about the heart and our human interconnectedness, and to remember that, despite all the conflicts, everyone has a metronome in their body that one day starts and one day stops… maybe we can all rally around this collective essence.

This show is an invitation—to people who have the capacity to do so—to sit together and listen to this great heart-drum we are all a part of.

The show was presented in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier from April 4 to 6, 2024.