Ariane Boulet, winner of the Prix Étincelle 2024, was the committee’s unanimous choice, recognized for an approach combining humanism, generosity, commitment, and integrity, qualities that correspond perfectly with the values of this prize. For 15 years now, her career as a dancer and creator has included stage, film, site-specific, and performative works. In 2012, she co-founded Je suis Julio, renamed Le Radeau in 2021, a space for co-creation that fosters the emergence of new works in an exchange with various communities, as well as reflections on social and artistic issues. In her project Mouvement de passage, begun in 2016, Ariane leads dancing visits to residents of long-term care institutions, reaching people with diminishing autonomy through the senses. This initiative has expanded to the Laurentian, Côte-Nord, Mauricie, and Lanaudière regions, where local artists are trained to continue the project. Ariane is the recipient of this year’s Prix Étincelle for her innovation and dedication in an approach that has created links with the medical world and which engages her high academic standards and her sensitivity as an artist.
Creator, performer and co-director of Le Radeau
Ariane Boulet is a dance artist with 15 years’ experience as both performer and creator. She is also co-director of Le Radeau, an organization based on a horizontal management model that fosters reflection on artistic practices and the values of community and openness towards others. As a performer, she has danced in studio and on stage for some 20 choreographers since 2009, and has created and co-produced a dozen film, stage, site-specific, and performance works with Le Radeau. In Ariane’s investigation of the discoveries, connections, and relationships made possible through the live arts, in 2014, she earned a master’s degree in dance with a focus on artistic creation in health care settings.
Since 2016, Ariane has led her flagship project, Mouvement de passage, offering dancing visits in seniors’ residences and long-term care centres (RPAs and CHSLDs). Through exposure to dance and music, the elderly with diminishing autonomy or at the end of life experience an awakening of the senses and a beneficial contact with their bodies and their creativity. Ariane completed post-graduate studies at l’Université de Montréal in lay spiritual care, bereavement accompaniment, and end-of-life support. Her movement workshops have resulted in collaborative projects with artists, patients, caregivers, and others across Quebec and around the world. She is also a cultural mediator, promoting the importance of creating contexts in which to experience dance and thereby transform our sentient relationship with the world.