What? You’ve never heard of Dulcinea Langfelder?

She’s never won a Pulitzer. She’s never been interviewed by Oprah, Barbara, or even Charlie Rose. But Dulcinea has been around. She’s one of the darlings of Montreal’s effervescent cultural scene. She’s the New Yorker who speaks (almost) perfect french, the dancer who sings and makes you laugh, the actress who moves you to tears. The few who don’t know her name call her: “the lady with the white fluff”.

She’s been described as, “ Dancer? Sure. Comedienne? Of course. Singer? Accomplished. Mime? Polished. Performance artist? That, too. But they’re all means to an end -- a delicate bittersweet kind of enigmatic human theatre that becomes far more than the sum of all its very disparate parts. With interactive technology, she fuses all this into a simple poetic-magical absurdity that makes us see the unbearable vulnerability of ordinary people with fresh eyes and fresh sympathy . ” (Max Wyman, The Province) She studied dance for much of her life, then mime with the master, Étienne Decroux, in Paris. She has studied theatre with Eugenio Barba and Yoshi Oida (long time colleague of Peter Brook). She came to Montreal in 1978 to work with the troupe, Omnibus, then briefly with Carbone 14. She founded her company in 1985, and has created full length, multidisciplinary works that have toured extensively in four continents. Vicious Circle (1985), The Lady Next Door (1989), Hockey! O.K.?(1991), Portrait of a Woman with Suitcase (1994) and Victoria (1999) are her major works. Quand le Vautour Danse (1997) written by Abla Farhoud, was a coproduction with Le Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui in Montreal (see following page). Enjoying her artistic liberty, she works in theatre, in cinema, in music and in musical theatre as choreographer and/or actress. Her versatility and her inspired performances garnered her the «Personnality of the Year in Dance», an honor given by the Montreal daily, La Presse, in 1990. The recurring praise centers on the thread that intertwines all of her work and makes it unique; an inspiration driven by an extensive search for lightness as a reaction to the weight of living. Using lightness, she is continually searching for a level of perception in which we find the courage to confront the tragi-comical reality of the human condition. ARTISTIC APPROACH “Everyone asks me to define what I do in terms of a discipline, everyone except my audience. During a performance, it becomes obvious. The human imagination does not categorize - the proof is in the dreaming! We don’t have “speaking” dreams, “musical” dreams or “movement” dreams. We don’t have “traditional” dreams or “experimental” dreams. When we dream we mix everything up. What I do on stage simply reflects the normal functioning of the imagination. Imagery is not just pictures. Imagery speaks to us on a level which goes deeper than language and culture, and concerns all of our senses, since imagery is suggestive, and provokes our sense memory. 4I struggle to find a balance between the concrete and the abstract, the banal and the poetic, and I am convinced that one can be real on stage without being realistic. I am often struck by fleeting images I perceive when I least expect to be inspired. It is a long process to construct a work, weaving together these fugitive elements. I need my entire body (including my vocal chords) to do it, and I need strong collaborators, in order to make sure that the audience is far too enthralled to notice the complexity behind the simplicity of the imagery they experience.”