Les Filles électriques (LFÉ) is an interdisciplinary company directed by artist D. Kimm featuring creations where poetry, performance, theatrics, music, and the visual and digital arts interact. LFÉ produces and presents live shows, performances, cabarets, cultural happenings, poetic events, short films, installations, and exhibitions along with the Phénomena Festival, a series of live performances devoted to experimentation. The company is based in Montréal’s Mile End neighbourhood and welcomes both Francophone and Anglophone artists.
Since it was founded in 2001, the company has had a dual mission: Les Filles électriques is a creation company that ALSO produces a festival. While this poses both an artistic and financial challenge, the duality reflects the director’s artistic vision and her desire to promote creativity, audacity, and poetry while providing a platform for innovative and unclassifiable artists. Over the years, LFÉ has developed a unique baroque-inspired signature and draws from traditions ranging from experimental cinema and tableaux vivants to surrealist and Dada movements. The company integrates projections and digital technologies into its productions and advocates a relationship between audience and performer. LFÉ has also been exploring the ever-changing notion of image theatre and studying audience/performer and narrative/image relationships.
As an interdisciplinary festival, Phénomena offers a platform and laboratory to emerging or established artists who work with the unclassifiable, unconventional, or experimental. We feature works of dance, music, theatre, and the digital and visual arts by artists who question their discipline and are looking to experiment with new forms. The Festival reaches an eclectic audience, one often new to interdisciplinary work.
After seventeen years, Les Filles électriques and its festival has managed to leave their mark on Canada’s artistic and cultural landscape.