Not your usual Facebook LIVE event: Three cameras brought three different views of this site-specific online performance in early 2021. “MIX” took place over 4 nights and featured a different 5-min live-online experience combining a concert, a dance performance and a site-specific multi-perspective journey, each night. Sing-a-long to classics which were chosen to reflect our community and what we are facing collectively, during this pandemic.

Toronto-based dance theatre company CORPUS, well known for its world travelling creation Les moutons (more than 1000 performances in 38 countries on 5 continents), presents a live Zoom performance for strange times. Our sheep performers stuck at home, following cancellations of international tours due to Covid-19.

Hannah Jocelyn writes:
If your attention span has been waning and your urge for comforting content waxing, might I suggest an absolute delight that is as brief as it is bright: “Sheep in Quarantine,” available on YouTube from Toronto-based dance-theatre company CORPUS. Since 2003, their signature piece “Les moutons” has been performed over four hundred times in more than twenty-five countries, and like many previously in-person performances has now been reimagined for an online adaptation in support of out-of-work artists. The wonderfully strange, speech-free eleven-minute video opens to a now-familiar Zoom screen; a group of dressed-down dancers are awaiting a meeting from their homes (in Vienna, Ottawa, Montreal, London, Toronto, and Bournazel). We watch as the dancers wiggle into lumpy mutton uniforms, complete with clanging neck bells, while a French folk song plays lambently in the background. They drop into character in time for their shepherd to appear in his Zoom square, wearing a surgical mask and carrying a staff. Embodying a flock, their eyes slide gently out of focus, ears twitch, and nostrils flare, as they bleat and work their imaginary cud and wander their limited spaces. Sometimes a sheep ambles out of frame, or climbs atop her bed. When the shepherd dozes off, we enter his dream. Accompanied by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Waltz of the Flowers,” the woolly beasts launch into a balletic romp among their own furniture: one uses her kitchen counter as a balance, another his window sill. It’s as graceful as can be when adorned with what must be several pounds of stuffing. I won’t ruin the surprise of what comes next; I’ll just say that the absurdity only adds to the fun. In a time when nothing is as it was, the purposeful playfulness of people pretending to be sheep pretending to be ballerinas is simply a joy to behold.

In December 2020, during the challenging times of COVID-19, CORPUS brought a very special version of “Les moutons” to households around the city. “Les moutons Holiday-Gram,” a funny, heart-warming project with our shepherd and three of his most talented sheep singing Christmas carols right on people’s front porches. We sang on 40 porches, for 40 families, for around 160 people. 

In the following year, in 2021, we were very excited to be part of The Junction’s Window Wonderland, a free immersive urban art walk, with an interactive, outdoor gallery. We piloted our collaboration by having our caroling sheep sing Christmas carols in front of every of the 21 unique augmented reality (AR) installations designed by 40 local and international artists.  

Now a holiday favorite in Toronto, the Alpine Merry sheep Choir will be at the Winter Market at St-Lawrence Market and the Upper Canada Mall in December 2025!