A collaboration between composer and choreographer where music and dance become one—that’s what two quartets, one made up of saxophonists and the other of dancers, brought to life. On Wednesday, Quasar presented the result of its collaboration with the Monterrey Higher School of Music and Dance. In a packed hall, the ten artists (four musicians and six dancers) immersed the audience in their world for the Canadian premiere of the concert Le souffle des corps.

Created by Mexican composer Alejandro Padilla and Quebec choreographer Danièle Desnoyers, Ouverture opens the program. In the darkness, the saxophonists’ breathing can be heard from backstage. Moving in tandem with the dancers, their entrance onto the stage occurs amid the musicians’ staccato breathing. As the dancers execute their movements in response to the saxophonists’ notes, the piece intensifies with the arrival of slaps, generating even more sudden movements from the dancers. The piece continues in a crescendo, complicating the piece’s language and liberating the dancers’ movements.

Interwoven with musical interludes composed by Chantale Laplante, the program flows seamlessly to keep the audience engaged with the movements unfolding on stage.

Next is Antichambre, by composer Eduardo Caballero and choreographer Lila Geneix. At each corner of the stage, the four saxophonists perform a series of sustained notes that, as the piece progresses, intensify in both volume and the dissonance of the chords played by the quartet—a tension that is reflected in the dancers’ movements.

Tres espacios, by composer Olivier St-Pierre and Mexican choreographer Jaime Sierra, explores movement characterized by sustained sounds produced by the instrumentalists. The piece gradually gains depth through the use of slap and polyrhythms.

This musical progression is thus also reflected in the dancers, who conclude the piece by freely taking over the entire stage and dancing to the sound of the saxophone.

Strange Attractor was created by the only all-Mexican duo: composer Miguel Vélez and choreographer Brisa Escobedo. Starting face to face, the dancers’ movements are dictated by the sound of the keys played by the saxophonists. Built as a crescendo, this piece is punctuated by a brief lull before resuming at full speed in a choreography where the dancers are torn between two opposing movements that clash.

The program concludes with Une même voix, by Quebec composer Sophie Dupuis and Mexican choreographer Daniel Luis. One by one, dancers and saxophonists take the stage. The piece is structured in this way, with each saxophonist playing a different motif. This blend of motifs creates an irregular rhythm that fuels both the music and the dancers’ movements.

In short, the music helped foster a meaningful dialogue between the musicians and dancers, and between Montreal and Monterrey.

On Thursday, the Lovemusic collective presented Protest of the Physical at La Chapelle scène contemporaine. It was a daring concert that explored the intersection of the body and music. The result? A diverse program performed with great sensitivity by the collective’s members, though it occasionally missed the mark.

The concert opens with “In die Ferne, dem Berg zu” by German composer Annette Schlünz and choreographer Anne-Hélène Kutujonsky. In my view, one of the concert’s highlights, the piece begins with the musicians dropping a handful of pebbles onto the floor. The relationship between the pebbles and the musicians is certainly ambiguous, but the pebbles hold a certain significance for the performers. Once they have taken their places at their instruments, the group’s artists mingle on stage, continuing to breathe as if their instruments were part of them and their breath emanated from them.

The piece ends as it began—with the guitar—using glissandos to guide the dancers’ movements as they search for their precious stones.

Hands, Drum—Three Bones by composer Nik Bohnenberger continues the concert. This piece is designed to be interactive, with the audience expected to perform the movements displayed on screen in order to alter their own listening experience of the piece. While some effects do not impact the listening experience itself, the biggest issue arose in the attention paid to the musicians during the piece—which was very little. Constantly distracted by the screen, the listener must therefore choose between listening to the piece or following the instructions displayed on the screen.

Seed, a piece by composer Bethany Younge, is certainly interesting from a conceptual standpoint. Featuring musicians who seem alienated from their instruments, we can sense the tension they share with them. The musical aspect thus unfolds along these same lines, where what is played stems from the very movement of these bodies on stage as they resist their instruments.

Inferno, by composer Helmut Oehring, concludes the concert. Blending music and sign language, the piece is a real slap in the face. As the cellist begins the piece by bowing her strings in sync with the soundtrack, a crescendo builds until she unleashes her instrument while letting out a series of screams. When the other musicians join in, the piece undergoes a drop that marks the beginning of the second section, performed entirely in sign language. A third section, blending body percussion and instrumental playing, reaches its climax as all four perform at the peak of their abilities, reintroducing—this time on the clarinet—the cries of despair heard earlier.