Helen
Simard

Helen Simard is a choreographer who has been working since 2000 in Tiohtiá:ke, or Montréal. After working with Solid State Breakdance for twelve years, an artist collective that combined street and contemporary dance, and participating in the creation of nine shows, she switched gears in 2012 to lead her own artistic projects. Helen Simard collaborates with musicians and dancers to create raw, visceral interdisciplinary shows, including On the Subject of Compassion (2011), Can You Hear Me? (2017) and Dance Side of the Moon (2018). She uses the codes and aesthetics of rock music, creating lively, interactive, performances that challenge the conventions of stage dance forms. For 6 years, her research was focused on the icon of American punk rock, Iggy Pop. Inspired by the music, persona, and cathartic dances of this legendary performer, she created a hallucinatory trilogy of works — No Fun (2014), Idiot (2017), and Requiem Pop (2019). Helen is currently artist in residence at Playwrights’s Workshop Montréal for the 2019-2021 season, through their interdisciplinary writers lab. She is using this opportunity to write her first play When Your Baby Dies. A graduate of the BFA in Contemporary Dance from Concordia University (2000), Helen Simard also holds a MA in Dance from UQAM (2014).