A woman of great loyalty, a visionary gifted with caring and rigorous leadership, Parise Mongrain has, over the years, established herself as a pillar of our community. Always committed to the well-being of artists, she has never hesitated to go to the front and fight important battles to meet the needs of dancers (and artists from other disciplines as well) to have their voices heard and considered. She knows how to listen to and guide dancers through this delicate period of transition, taking into account the interests of the artist. She provides support to injured dancers, notably to help them determine their transition plan when covered by the CNESST, with whom she has established a strong and effective dialogue. She has been programming and hosting the annual danse TRANSIT event since its inception, whose mission is to share as much information as possible with graduates of professional dance schools in the province of Quebec and Ottawa in order to assist them in making an informed transition into the professional world.
PARISE MONGRAIN
Parise Mongrain graduated from the Collège Montmorency’s Arts – concentration dance program and LADMMI (now École de danse contemporaine de Montréal), and was a professional contemporary dancer for 14 years before dedicating herself to advocating on behalf of dancers. In 1999, she was elected dancers’ representative on the Board of Directors of the Union des artistes (UDA). She also served on the Board of Directors of the Caisse de la sécurité des artistes (CSA) from 2001 to 2003, before being appointed, in April 2003, Secretary General of the UDA, a post she left in April 2011 in order to pursue her university studies. Her contribution to the UDA earned her an honorary life membership. In 2002, she joined the Dancer Transition Resource Centre (DTRC) to open the Quebec office, which she has been directing ever since. Highly inspired by the spirit and sense of purpose of the DTRC’s founder, Mrs Joysanne Sidimus, Parise is committed to supporting the DTRC’s mission in Quebec wholeheartedly. Backed by a loyal team, she set up the Centre québécois de ressources et transition pour danseurs (CQRTD), bringing together a devoted Board of Directors to ensure that the first steps of career transition services for artists in other disciplines are successfully funded by the government of Quebec.
Parise Mongrain has sat on several Boards of Directors. She is Secretary of the Board of the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC-Ottawa) and was a member of the Board of the Hnatyshyn Foundation in Ottawa until October 2020. In 2013, she obtained a DESS in Cultural Organization Management from HEC Montréal, and subsequently a Master’s degree in Industrial Relations from the Université de Montréal. In the fall of 2020, she resumed her studies at HEC Montréal for a Master’s degree in “Management des entreprises culturelles”.