MERGING SPECIES
interactive experimental opera - for soprano and gestural interface2026for soprano and gestural interface (duo) - 20 minutes
Pictures - Festival ELEKTRA 2026, Brave Nouveau Monde – © Christian Pomerleau, GRIDSPACE
MERGING SPECIES is a live duo performance where gesture, opera voice, electronics and stage presence merge into an evolving composition.
With a wearable gestural interface, Gabriela Hébert shapes soprano Michelle Bawden's voice in real time, deforming, triggering, disrupting. Between them, a dialogue of control and resistance: two forces in tension, searching, losing, finding each other.
The sonic space gathers modular textures, synthesizers, violin and opera voice unfolding through progressive tensions and shifting rhythmic dynamics. What follows oscillates between rupture and stillness, until the voice comes to hold what it cannot quite name.
Artistic direction, composition and live electronics - Gabriela HébertSoprano - Michelle BawdenMovement direction - Ariane LevasseurCostume design - PROCESSVISUAL Camera - Cedric Laurenty, George Fok, Gustav Lavoie, Xavier Rivard-DésyMERGING SPECIES
interdisciplinary performance - interactive experimental opera2025for 1 soprano, 1 gestural interface, 8 live art performers and 10 dancers (20 artists) - 27 minutes
Pictures - George Fok
MERGING SPECIES unfolds as a pluridisciplinary performance where 20 artists share the stage and scenographic space, gestural interface, opera, live art, and dance merging into a single evolving score.
With a wearable gestural interface, Gabriela Hébert shapes soprano Michelle Bawden's voice in real time, deforming, triggering, disrupting. They guide the performers by the music from the stage, while dancers and live art performers travel through the audience, parting, moving, redirecting its path through the space.
The work brings together music as narration, composed as chapters, where characters complete the story, and dancers merging into the audience. Breaking the line between stage and audience, the performance becomes an experience lived and shared, where the space is converted into a material of composition..
Artistic direction, composition and live electronics - Gabriela HébertSoprano - Michelle BawdenViolin - Zein NakhlehMovement direction - Ariane LevasseurLive art - Amélie Clément, Ariana Molly, Céleste, Hajia Maa, Joy Boissiere, Nicolas Bourgois, Martine Bilodeau, Vincent IsabelDancers - Châtelaine Côté-Rioux, Clémence Dinard, Camille Scully, Desirée James, Elle Horton, Frédérique Perron, Jacynthe Desjardins, Jimmy Trieu Phong Chung, Lou-Anne Rousseau, Marie-Anne RahimiCostume design - PROCESSVISUAL Stage management - Laura Kulber Hair - Karine Savard, Mathieu BeauséjourMakeup - Édouard Pierre AyotteCamera - Cedric Laurenty, George Fok, Gustav Lavoie, Xavier Rivard-Désy