Les Proies Meurtries – Hier
Credits
Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Sound Designer: Paolo Santos
Concept, Direction, Choreography, Performance: Sara Harton
Music: Owen Belton
Performance: Marie-France Jacques, Marie Eve Quilicot & Sara Harton
Texts: Sara Harton & Paolo Santos
Country of Origin and Filming: Canada
Format: Digital, Color, 16:9
Genre: Dance Film / Contemporary Dance
Runtime: 9:15 min
Description
During our existence, we are called to evolve, grow, change, and become – for better and for worse.
What in a lifetime causes someone to shift from light to darkness, from victim to aggressor, and back again?
What are these turning points when humanity seems to fade or to rise once more?
Bio Sara Harton (choreographer):
Native of Quebec City, Sara is a École Supérieure de Ballet du Québec graduate. Recipient of numerous awards, including the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec’s, she distinguished herself within the Jeune Ballet du Québec on stages worldwide.
From 2003 to 2006, she danced with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal in the production of The Nutcracker in ballet corps roles.Upon graduating from ESBCM in 2006, she joined BJM Danse, where she performed in works by Azure Barton, Rodrigo Pederneiras, Crystal Pite, and Mauro Bigonzetti. Since 2009, Sara has been part of ezdanza, Danse K par K, P.P.S. Danse, Les 7 doigts de la main (Triptyque), Trip the Light Fantastic, Umanoove/Didy Veldman, Cirque Éloize, and Le Petit Théâtre de Sherbrooke, in addition to developing her own choreographic projects.
As an independent artist, she also participates in various choreographic, film, and music video projects, and collaborates with different schools as a teacher, assistant choreographer, and choreographer.
Bio Paolo Santos (filmmaker):
Paolo is a Canadian filmmaker whose work focuses on art, dance films and video projection content. He has worked with Universal Music France, Wolfgang Entertainment, Celine Dion Angelil Productions, and the Naba Theatre in Phnom Penh as head of Video and 3D projection mapping. During his ten years in the United States, Paolo conceptualized the show « The Inhabitants Project » – a show that blended a series of short films with dance. The show created awareness for the plight of the marine ecosystem and raised funds for the United Nations official coral reef monitoring program « ReefCheck Foundation ». Paolo worked closely with musical director, Claude Lemay.
He also co-founded « StealFocus Productions » in Las Vegas, worked closely with the dancers and musicians from « A New Day » and created the show « Mind the Gap », which was later retitled, « La Gare », when Festival International de Danse Encore commissioned it.
A dialogue with the choreographer
For Les Proies Meurtries – Hier, the creative team explored the coexistence of three roles: the attacker, the victim, and the witness.
Sara Harton explains that while several choreographic sequences were pre-designed, much of the expressive movement came from improvisation and the instincts of each performer. The intention was to create a tension between physical control and emotional impulse.
Paolo Santos, operating the camera, became the fourth dancer through the framing and movement of the image, integrating cinematography as part of the choreographic process.
For the music, Sara collaborated with composer Owen Belton, who shared a collection of existing compositions. Two pieces were reworked to match the rhythm and structure of the film, achieving the desired atmospheres of tension and introspection. The texts heard in voiceover were written jointly by Harton and Santos, giving a poetic and psychological layer to the visual narrative.
Programmer’s Notes – Blas Payri
This work explores the tension between victim, aggressor, and witness through a dynamic interplay of choreography and camera. The structure evolves across three spatial situations that propose different ways of presenting the human body: an initial interior with close framings, a middle section against the sky filmed from below, and a final sequence in open fields with wider and more distant shots.
The opening in the dark barn is visually powerful. The dancers, filmed close to the camera, perform large, forceful gestures that occupy the entire frame. Their proximity exaggerates movement and transforms the body into a dramatic surface of tension. The limited light and strong contrasts create a charged, almost oppressive atmosphere, with image superpositions that echo the multiplicity of identities and inner conflicts. The use of direct address to the camera introduces a videoperformance quality that strengthens the feeling of confrontation and vulnerability.
The transition to the outdoor section, where the dancers are filmed against the sky, opens the space and gives a striking sense of physical elevation. The choreography becomes more expansive, and the light accentuates the torsos and arms in motion, creating a visual continuity with the gestures of the interior scene.
In the last part, the action moves to the fields, with wider framings and harsh daylight. The sense of immediacy and intimacy from the first section is lost, but the progression makes visible a movement from confinement to exposure, from interior struggle to external expression. The contrast between the expressive beginning and the open ending gives the piece a spatial and emotional trajectory that mirrors the theme of transformation and instability in human behavior.
This work also reflects a frequent tendency in dance films from Quebec, where choreography is combined with spoken text to reinforce meaning and emotion. These pieces often pursue a social or psychological message, placing expressive content and reflection above pure formal or aesthetic experimentation.
