FESS is a non-verbal pas-de-deux about old men. In the words of the choreographer Alec Turgeon, it's a movement study of how it feels "to have that kind of freedom to do anything." Turgeon and Ro Paloma, two trans dancers from Concordia, spend 40 minutes inside of the bodies least corrected by society.The show is built around actions and objects. FESS opens on the 12 of June and runs until the 21 at the Halbro Building, PlayShed, as a part of Montréal Fringe 2026.
Everything You Touch Is Something That You Own: Alec Turgeon on FESS
Interview in tasks and in objects
FESS is a non-verbal pas-de-deux about old men. In the words of the choreographer Alec Turgeon, it's a movement study of how it feels "to have that kind of freedom to do anything." Turgeon and Ro Paloma, two trans dancers from Concordia, spend 40 minutes inside of the bodies least corrected by society.
Alec Turgeon (he/him) is a transsexual dance artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, AB), based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, QC). His choreographic work evolves from a deep desire to pull the intricacies of human experience into visibility; to hold, to question, and to move embodied wisdom through space and time. Alec is excited by dance’s ability to orient collective focus and generate transcendental empathy between mover(s) and witness(es). Lately, he is invested in staging trans* embodiment and practicing communal trans* worlding in experimental dance and performance. His work is informed by radio transmission, time travel, physical media, the invisible, and DIY low-tech scenographic exploration. Alec holds a BFA in Contemporary Dance (Concordia University, 2026) with a minor in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality.
FESS opens on the 12 of June and runs until the 21 at the Halbro Building, PlayShed, as a part of Montréal Fringe 2026.
Task first: become an old man
Did the show come from an image, a limb, a sound, or a question?
"I've always been super fascinated by old men. I like the clothes that they wear. I always try to dress like an old man — like my watch I wear every day, because old men wear watches like these."
Do you think that the show exoticises old-men bodies, the way that trans bodies have been exoticised?
"There's just a way in which they move through the world that is so like, everything is mine and everything that I do makes sense, and nobody is ever correcting them on bad behavior. And when they do, things kind of can spiral out of control."
"There's many years of noticing this phenomenon happening, and also noticing how I react to it and how I'm complicit in it — like old men have said things to me that are really outrageous and I haven't corrected them on it. I just wanted to become one with a friend. I'm really, really curious what it's like to have that kind of freedom to do anything."
The written form doesn't quite do this interview justice — even over Zoom, Alec was gesturing and physicalizing his answers quite affectingly. It was difficult not to be affected by his enthusiasm, his jouissance in the project of embodying an old man.
Alec spent the last year inside trans studies while working on dance. "Trans methods of making," as it's called.
So like, what actually is trans studies?
"Trans studies is looking at transness as something that can be learned from. It emerged as the first way that trans people could talk about themselves and talk about their experience, not through the lens of cis people."
"I am obsessed with it. I love it, it's made me rethink transness a lot. I come from Alberta, which is like a super conservative province, and I had a lot of negativity there, but with finding trans studies, it's reframed my transness as something that I can learn from, and something that is like a gift."
Their niche in the field is affect theory."This idea of everyday emotions, how things affect us, and how being trans impacts the daily living and response to different interactions."
Task second: put on a hat a lot
The choreography is built from the ground, from units, from tasks. States that Alec defines for himself and for Ro, most of them with objects.
"There's a part where Ro is trying to put a hat on for a really long time, and is really, really trying to put a hat on. There's a lot of these moments where we're trying to do these things that make no sense and have no apparent goal, but we're doing them as if it's the most essential, most important thing in the world."
Even through the screen, I could tell that Alec has a very sensitive, responsive way of being in space — a way fundamentally opposed to old men bodies. He walked me through the performers' decision to dance as if with blinkers on.
"A lot of the reason why men are like this is because they're not aware of other people and how their actions are impacting other things. So this is something that we took on early on — everything we do, we are not aware of what's going on around us. We are honed in and really, really focused, even if the task makes no sense. Which most of them make no sense."
The-inventory
Out of the imaginary, dusty cis-masculine garage:
Serious piece of heavy chain(one for everyone)
Pipe, metal
Big bag
Milk crates
"When I was thinking of the aesthetic I was thinking very garage," said Alec. "Random junk that has been collected and is sitting around waiting for the one day that you need this little piece of pipe that is like this long and makes no sense."
Task third: field research
The research involved looking at old men bodies on public transport. "From the first moment I had this idea, and I had a yes from Ro that he wanted to dance for me, I was like, okay, we're locked in, we're looking at old men, and we're noticing how they act."
"I saw, when I was walking to the grocery store months ago, a guy doing a full stretching routine right outside the grocery store. It was like winter stretching, and I just found that so odd — and we went in the studio and I had Ro do it, and now it's in the piece."
Task fourth: choreograph the hyperbole
Alec choreographed the show that he also performs in. And without mirrors; since most of the work was about externalizing a subjective experience.
Alec's instinctive dance style is "this octopus sort of in water, gooey type movement." This was the texture of their previous dance collaboration with Ro, which was "quite tender and suspended and gooey." In devising FESS, he discovered a new dynamic in their contrasting styles.
"The times that I had seen him move, there was this really intense, fast energy. Things were sharp and concise, and he wasn't afraid to fall. He is always in this state of surrender, where I'm like, I don't know what your body is about to do, and I don't think you do either, but you're with it and trusting it."
"My hypothesis with the piece is: when anyone is given that amount of freedom, chaos and mess will follow. So I knew I needed someone who could dance chaos, and Ro can dance chaos very, very well."
Task fifth: say it without words
It's probably easier to make an argument about cis-masculine social permission in a play, or a piece of stand-up. So why dance?
"Something that I really believe about dance is that it has this capacity to create an empathetic exchange. The piece works a lot with rage. When I see someone feeling enraged in their body in a performance, I, as an audience member, feel it in my body as well. I don't notice it, but my hands start to tense up."
Language, on the other hand, gives people handles to hold onto. "Language can make things really, really messy, in a way that's not productive. You try to have a conversation with someone, but they're already convinced of their side. We can't always get to conclusions with language."
"In dance you can see everything is a mess, you can see that we're heaving, that we can't keep up with what this freedom does to our bodies. We are spiraling out of control, and people have to watch it. And that's the statement — the freedom makes you spiral out of control, and you watched it, and we reached the conclusion."
Is language the enemy?
Alec replied, that it's his "life question for the next 10 years." And then: "Sometimes it is. And also it is a tool, and it's really hard to master."
Task sixth: take it as if it's yours
A key insight came from Liam Gover, who shares the role of an external eye with Lula Mengual. Liam saw a run early on and put a finger on what was missing.
"He immediately was like, you're not being violent. When you're approaching the objects, your hand is soft and gentle. And then he showed us: when a man grabs something, they take it, and it's decisive, and it's fast."
"He framed it as: everything you touch is something that you own. That exploded it open. Everything became clear in him saying that one piece. It's exactly the note that we needed."
It's just so different to who they are in their daily lives: "we are very sensitive and kind, generous people. We definitely don't walk into rooms like I own everything."
Sidebar: insulate yourself from your sound designer
Two sound designers. Zero eye contact
Two sound designers, zero eye contact
The soundtrack is composed and performed live by Rena Adell Eyamie."She has some metal and she's clanging stuff together and shaking things in jars," hidden in-corner of the-stage. Nicki White samples the crazy sounds that Alec and Ro produce on a pocket operator, which they then mix into segments that surface toward the end.
The sound was built around the movement, not the other way around. Intentionally so — since it's a choreography of not-listening.
"Rena will be playing, and I can't hear it — it's totally out of my awareness, because I'm so invested in whatever I'm doing. Rena isn't even looking at us when she's making noise. She is also in this mode of: I'm doing this like it's the most important thing at the moment, and I am in my own little island."
Adopting the attitude and demeanour of old men, trans performers Alec and Ro find themselves instilled with an excessive amount of freedom. Indulging in the unbound agency and universal social permission afforded to older men, they expose and appropriate cis-hetero-masculine modes of chaos and mess-making.
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