Free dance show at Place des Festivals features stunning live choreography

Sixty people move as one, but they aren't following an agreed-upon choreography each dancer is hearing the voice of Martin Messier in their ear, telling them how to move and when to start.

The show is called Innervision and is being put on at the Place des Festivals in downtown Montreal as part of theFestival TransAmriques.

Messier describes himself as the "brain" of the operation, quite literally, transmitting instructions, telling people to move theirs limbs, heads and bodies at different moments.

To facilitate this, each dancer wears an earpiece that connects to Messier's control booth.

"They are connected to me this way so I can, during the piece, tell them every move," he said. "And I'm giving them a countdown and I'm always talking during the whole performance."

The performance also involves about 30 tables thatare wired to amplify sound, and dancers use rocks and their bodies to interact with the set to create sound.

While Innervision is primarily a contemporary dance piece, Messier says it's got multi-disciplinary elements, with lighting and sound components that are intregrated into the performance.

He said that putting together a dance show with so many people involved would normally take a year of work and intensive rehearsals, but by controlling everyone's movement through verbal instructions, the preparation time went down to a matter of weeks.

He said the trick was "finding a universal language" through which he could voice instructions and get the best result.

In the end, he discovered that simplicity was the key to successand ended up creating a piece that was on the shorter side in order to account for the interest of passersby.

As an outdoor free show, the first of the season at the Place des Festivals, Messier wanted to make sure he could keep people's attention for the right amount of time.

Ultimately, he's hoping people will stumble across the show and discover something they haven't seen before.

Innervision is running as part of the dance and theatreFestival TransAmriques. The showruns May 29 to June 1, with performances at 9 p.m. the first three days, 10 p.m. on Friday and both 9 and 10 p.m. onSaturday.