Sylvie Frigon

Sylvie Frigon is a full professor in the Department of Criminology and Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada. For the past 20 years, she has been working on dance in prisons with choreographer Claire Jenny of the Point Virgule dance company. They are now collaborating on a new project that explores the role of researchers’ bodies in the production of knowledge.

The project

Title: The researcher's body in balance

"The researcher's body in balance is a research project that questions the liminality of researchers in the humanities and social sciences, and how the practice of choreographic art can displace the conception and realization of their research projects. Dance, the art of fine-tuned perception of bodies in all their diversity, and of the sensitivity of gestures, works on our apprehension of the world, of the Other, and the nature of our actions. In one way or another, all the pieces in the Compagnie Point Virgule's repertoire, as well as the shared creation projects carried out in prisons over the past 30 years, propose a sharing of the experiences of mobile, open bodies. Bodies that are constantly constructing/reconstructing themselves in an infinite alternation between balance and imbalance, in the literal, physical sense, as well as in the figurative sense, more or less ample, alone or connected to others. Accompanied by the faithful performers and artistic collaborators of Compagnie Point Virgule, I've been exploring the phenomena of balance for many years, notions that are essential and foundational to my artistic approach: suspension, the in-between state of imbalance, the perpetual to-and-fro between phoric and haptic functions, the constant interplay between being on one's feet and moving towards, in the postural, mobile and relational sense. How can these danced phenomena of equilibrium interrogate the physicality of researchers in the humanities and social sciences, their liminalities, and perhaps renew academic practices?."

Hosting institution: Compagnie de danse Point Virgule, Paris

Selective Bibliography

• Ridha, Thana et Sylvie Frigon (2025). Staging Prison Theatre in Canada: Setting the Spotlight on William Head on Stage. Ottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa.
• Frigon, Sylvie (2019) (sous la direction de). Danse, enfermement et corps résilients/Dance, Confinement and Resilient Bodies. Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa.
• Frigon, Sylvie et Claire Jenny (2020) (sous la direction de). « Aux lisières de l’art, de l’intervention et de la justice sociale » (numéro thématique), Nouvelles Pratiques Sociales, vol. 30, no.2).
• Frigon, Sylvie (2012) (sous la direction de). Corps suspect, corps déviant. Montréal: Les éditions du Remue-ménage, 316 pages.
• Frigon, Sylvie et Claire Jenny (2009). Chairs incarcérées : Une exploration de la danse en prison. Montréal : Les éditions du Remue-ménage, 187 pages