Anne-Marie Gardette, dancer, choreographer and teacher.
Recognized for the quality of her reconstructions of the Baroque repertoire, Anne-Marie Gardette devotes her time to both performing and teaching early dance.
In her native France, she received professional training in classical and contemporary dance at the Centre de Danse International Rosella Hightower in Cannes. Her studies then took her to Paris, where she had the privilege of attending the university classes of Francine Lancelot, one of France’s pioneers in the revival of court dances. She soon joined the Ris et Danceries baroque dance company directed by Madame Lancelot. From 1986 to 1994, she danced in the company’s major productions, notably under the musical direction of William Christie with Les Arts Florissants in France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in the United States, Japan, Latin America and the Near and Middle East.
In 2000, she and Pierre Chartrand (dancer, gigueur and câlleur) founded Danse Cadence, a company dedicated to the dissemination of traditional and ancient dance.
As part of her research into 18th-century dance in Quebec, she is working on reconstructing dances from the Trois-Rivières manuscript Livre des contredanses avec les figures [c.1765]. She regularly presents the French contredanses from the manuscript at courses, workshops and conferences in Canada and France.
Her work with Danse Cadence fuses ancient and traditional repertoires, including Gigue&Baroque, Voyage baroque, Le bal des Ménestriers and Voyage symphonique with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. She has been invited to various festivals, venues and historical events (Boxwood, Music and Beyond in Ottawa, Montréal Baroque, Les Fêtes de la Nouvelle-France, Musée Pointe-à-Callière, Musée et château de Versailles, Les Maisons de la culture de Montréal, etc.).
Anne-Marie Gardette also collaborates with Les Jardins chorégraphique, under the direction of Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière, on a number of projects as a dancer-performer (Festival Montréal Baroque, Les Idées Heureuses, Orchestre symphonique de Laval).
She regularly teaches Baroque dance, Renaissance dance and contredanses at the Centre des musiciens du monde in Montreal. She also teaches waltz at the École des arts de la veillée. She is a guest teacher at the École supérieure de ballet du Québec (ESBQ) for the course in dance history, early dance section. Since fall 2020, she has been offering weekly online classes from September to May, teaching solo dances from the Belle Dance repertoire.
To find out more about Anne-Marie, visit the Danse Cadence website: www.danse.qc.ca