Dehumanize yourself

With the abundance of media focus on beautiful décor, home renovations and shows like Trading Places seemingly multiplying daily, the work of Isabelle Hayeur gets us out of the house to take a look at the environment we’re all complicit in creating. At first glance her photographs appear like documents of existing spaces, but in reality they are collages constructed from diverse sources—a world where Miami Beach condos sit seamlessly next to buildings from Rosemont, and model homes stand in sunny landscapes atop shadowy excavations filled with trash.

Hayeur’s figureless images juxtapose the natural with the manmade with surprising results: The more we humans manipulate the earth, the more dehumanized it appears.

Her photographs are showing until Nov. 20 at Thérèse Dion Art contemporain (372 Ste-Catherine W., #527). They’re also the highlight of the Urban Territories exhibition at the Musée d’art contemporain that runs until Jan. 8. —Christine Redfern

Portable dance

No props, no gizmos, no distractions, nada. Just dance. Portable Dances that is, by local choreographer José Navas, who strips down his latest to a visual movement exhibit at l’Agora de la Danse (840 Cherrier).

The hour-long show, set on a barren stage, is made up of three very distinct segments linked by a soundscape built around snippets of the dancers’ voices by composer and musician Alexander MacSween.

The opening piece, Pas de Deux for Four Dancers includes Navas, Mira Peck, Magali Stoll and Chanti Wadge who execute complex, precise movements in a creation that revolves around partner work. Next up, Navas, fluid as a languorous exhalation, owns the stage in his breathtaking Solo With Light. Trio in White brings it all to a close, featuring all the dancers save for Navas, taking their turn to illustrate the fluidity of motion. Runs until Oct. 29, 8 p.m., 525-7575 for tickets. —Marites Carino

Word 5-0

The Words and Music at the Casa series is celebrating 50 shows and five years this Sunday, Oct. 30, at the Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent). “The event is like a big party for all the poets,” says series organizer, MC, spoken word artist, record producer and renaissance man Ian Ferrier. “Anyone who’s ever performed in the series gets in free.” Expect all manner of word with Catherine Kidd, Geneviève Letarte, Jennifer Boire, Kaie Kellough, Erin May, Victoria Stanton, Steven Thomas, Paula Belina and Fortner Anderson, who’s launching his second disc, six silk purses. Each track is an experimental collaboration with noted Montreal sound artists like Chantal Dumas, Alexandre St-Onge, Alexander MacSween, Christof Migone and Sam Shalabi (all of whom will be performing). “The composers transformed each separate recording using their own extraordinary visions, and yet the tonal quality of my voice links the pieces together strongly,” Anderson explains. Show starts at 8 p.m., $5. —Vincent Tinguely

Hi-class heebie-jeebies

Now that Automatic Vaudeville Studios has built a horrifying tradition around both their annual Halloween bashes and their frighteningly frequent film screenings, they’re combining them together, throwing in a few bands, and christening a scary new hybrid term to boot.

Tonight, Thursday, Oct. 27, the bloody AVS triumvirate dare you to join them, along with most of history’s famous monsters and musical acts the Donkeys and Big Gold Hoops & Kosher Dill Spears at la Sala Rossa (4848 St-Laurent) for their Hi-Class Halloween Screeming. The night will feature the première of The Sophisticated Detectives in Who Killed Dracula, presented in AVS’s patent-pending “Choose-o-Rama” format, in which the audience helps with the sleuth work by guiding the detectives with special laser sticks. Also on tap is Daniel Perlmutter’s The Clock Strikes Doom!, the release of the Hi-Class DVD Vol. 2, and lots more before the music and dancing take over everything. Doors at 9 p.m., $8 with a costume, $10 without. —Matthew Woodley

Is it Art?

CHURCH VS. SNACK: There are two labyrinth events going on in Montreal this weekend. One is set up by the Montreal West United Church to promote an ancient form of spiritual guidance and reflection. The other is to promote Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Smart Pop!, a trans-fat free version of their poptastic buttery snack. Thank God there’s no overlap. The church’s labyrinth—a wall-less, painted-on-the-floor affair that “can be life-changing” nonetheless—is open on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2–5 p.m. (Westminster at Curzon), free. Redenbacher’s maze—with its nine-foot-high walls made of real corn stalks and popcorn fact displays throughout—is open throughout Oct. 28–29 (Bleury and de Maisonneuve), with voluntary $1 donations going to the Quebec Heart Foundation.

ArtsHole

ARTS AND ACTIVISTS FUSION: The newest issue of long-running arts and politics magazine Fuse gets launched on Wednesday, Nov. 2 at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent), 7 p.m. The night will see a presentation by Montreal artist and activist Freda Guttman, Stephan Hashemi speak on the topic of his late mother Zahra Kazemi’s work being disallowed from the walls of the Cote-St-Luc Library, and spun tunes care of the evening’s curator, Tobias C. van Veen. • UNDER THE SEA: The Musée Pointe-à-Callière goes deep this Tuesday, Nov. 1, with the opening of the international exhibition Jules Verne: Writing the Sea, which continues until April 20.

ARTISTAT: Number of shows and events that will make up the 6th annual Festival du Monde Arabe de Montreal, which, under the theme “Harem,” delves into the once forbidden terrain of taboos, Oct. 28–Nov. 13, www.festivalarabe.com for all the details: 85

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