France Bourque-Moreau - Short Biography

France Bourque-Moreau lives in Montréal, Québec and for the past thirty-five years has been active in Canada and abroad teaching folk dances for children and conducting special seminars to train school teachers in this field.

Her current repertoire includes hundreds of dances and singing/games from all parts of the world especially designed and adapted to various age and experience levels. Ms. Bourque-Moreau also puts emphasis on the French and French-Canadian repertoire which is widely used in the Canadian school curriculum.

She has been a regular consultant to the Montreal School Board and has helped in the production of 2 LP records containing French-Canadian songs and dances as well as a similar repertoire representative of the various ethnocultural groups in Montreal. This material is used in the Montreal School Board music and dance program at the elementary school level. She is also actively involved with Montreal's annual Children Festival ( La Fête des Enfants de Montréal ) as coordinator of the «Entrons dans la Danse» participatory workshop.

France Bourque-Moreau is the author of Je Danse Mon Enfance (I dance my chilhood) published in 1979 by FLDQ in Montreal and now in its fifth printing. The book contains some 80 dances as well as useful tips on teaching, with emphasis on rhythms, formations, cultural background and psycho-motricity. The book is also approved by the Quebec Board of Education. In 1983, she co-authored with Michel Landry La Danse d'Inspiration Traditionnelle au Primaire which suggests a pedagogical approach to teaching folk dance in elementary schools and groups the dances in relationship to holidays, rituals and trade guilds. It also looks at creative variations of traditional dances.

Ms. Moreau is a founding member of Dance and the Child Int'l, chairperson of Danse-Education-Folklore du Quebec a provincial organization which regroups educators using folk dancing in schools. DEFQ was responsible for setting up a special children's folklore workshop program, Les Enfants Autour du Monde , first as part of the Drummondville World Folklore Festival and later held for many years in Lachine, near Montréal. She has been active in the ORFF music education movement and was President of the Quebec Chapter of Orff Music for Children Canada and former secretary on the national executive. She has conducted lectures and courses across North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan. She also researched and notated several French-Canadian dances of the Saguenay region which were published in Danses et costumes régionaux au Québec (FLDQ, 1977).

For fifteen years she performed with the folk dance ensemble Les Gens de Mon Pays with whom she toured Europe and North America. In the performing field, Ms.Moreau has choregraphed French-Canadian dances for Les Gens de Mon Pays and many other performing groups in Canada and abroad: Les Réveilloneux (Fredericton, N.B.), Les Blés d'Or (St.Paul, Alberta), Komenka (New Orleans, LA), Khadra (San Francisco, CA), Aman (Los Angeles, CA) , Carol Maddocks Dancers (Sydney, Australia) and Folkloristich Danstheater (Amsterdam, Netherlands).

In the summer of 1984 and 1988, she taught French-Canadian folk dances at the annual Folklories (gathering of French choral groups) in France. In October 1989 she returned to Australia as a guest specialist under the auspices of the Australian Association for Dance Education (now Ausdance ). She has made special presentations on folk arts programs for children during CIOFF International folklore festivals and conferences including Orlando and Milwaukee (U.S.A.), Zielona Gora (Poland), Rättvik (Sweden) and I-lan, (Taiwan). In 1998 she was part of the Canadian official delegation to the Unesco Cultural summit held in Stockholm. In 2006 she was invited to teach French-Canadian and children's dances at the Winterlager Dance Camp in Switzerland and in October 2007 will be doing her third workshop with Italian educators in Reggio Emila, Italy sponsored by Balliamo sul' Mondo.

She has been vice-president of the Conseil québécois du patrimoine vivant (Quebec Living Heritage Council) and was also on the Board of la Société du patrimoine d'expression du Québec (SPEQ). She has been a regular lecturer for several Elderhostel programs in Montreal. Her sessions with kids in Quebec elementary schools are elligible for funding through the Quebec Government program entitled Artists at School .

Her widely-used CD «Danse, mon coeur danse!» featuring French-Canadian dances, rounds and songs for elementary and pre-school children was released in November 1999.

11.2008