In Motion November - Dana Michel: YOU CANNOT CAN

Dana Michel has asked herself for years why swimming feels so foreign - even though she has tried to learn again and again. The same question applies to her family: they come from an island surrounded by sea on both sides, the Atlantic on one and the Caribbean on the other, but most of them cannot swim. What does that say about the sense of safety in a world where the human body is largely made of liquid?

From these starting points, Michel has created her new solo work YOU CANNOT CAN, which is made specifically for a swimming pool. The work is presented at Hotel St. George's spa section by the Old Church Square. Surrounded by the audience, Michel moves through the historical and socioeconomic layers of swimming and water access.

YOU CANNOT CAN is part of the Liikkeellä in November festival 5-15.11.2026. Earlier at the festival, Michel's solo works YELLOW TOWEL (2014), MERCURIAL GEORGE (2016), CUTLASS SPRING (2019) and MIKE (2023) have been shown. During the festival, Michel discusses with a local artist in an open Soup Talks event on 10.11 at 12:00 at Caisa.

Dana Michel is a Montreal-based performance artist whose work combines improvisation, choreography, sculpture, comedy, hip-hop, film art, techno, poetry, psychology, dub and social criticism. Before earning her bachelor's degree in dance from Concordia University, she worked as a marketing director as well as a competitive runner and footballer. She has won numerous awards: ImPulsTanz Award (Vienna, 2014), the Venice Biennale's Silver Lion for dance innovation (2017), ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art (2019), the Jaqueline-Lemieux Prize from Canada Council of the Arts (2022) and Prix de la danse de Montréal for international work selected by CINARS (2024). In 2014, New York Times named her one of the year's most important female choreographers, and in 2018 she became Canada's National Arts Centre's first dance resident artist.

Creator and performer: Dana Michel
Artistic activation: Alex S