At Library Square on Friday, June 19. Continues at 5:15 p.m. daily until July 18

For those heading home from work at 5:15 p.m., the sight of a man dressed in sleek black moving fluidly within a large taped-off square in the middle of a busy downtown block is enough to draw attention. But the most fascinating thing about veteran choreographer-dancer Paul-André Fortier’s free shows—on all month in Library Square—isn’t so much the performance itself. It’s how the city becomes a part of the work, and the way you become aware of things you might not notice if you were, well, hurrying home from the office.

Fortier’s soundtrack becomes a rhythm of revving motors, punctuated by honking horns and whoops from a patio where the after-work crowd is just getting into its cups. Flocks of pigeons swoop over his head and up into the space above. And then there’s the constant parade of passersby: the guy who’s sucking back a Slurpee but stops for five minutes to ponder what he’s witnessing; the suits who point and laugh; the preschooler with the pink Dora the Explorer backpack who becomes transfixed and refuses to budge when her father tries to coax her home. Everyone carefully avoids Fortier’s square until the inevitable happens. A homeless person, a junkie—whoever he is, he steps inside the square, and for a moment you see that both, in a way, are transgressing a space. Fortier stays immersed in his silent dance until the man drifts away.

The Montreal dance icon has performed Solo 30x30 in cities around the globe, setting up in the same location at the same time for 30-day stretches. It’s an act of bravery, liberation, and utter commitment to his craft. He strides from corner to corner in his box, sometimes stopping to scallop the air with fluttering arms or swing his limbs like pendulums. The piece seems less a fully realized work than an abstract series of gestures—almost as if designed to catch the attention of passersby. He shakes his head maniacally and holds it to stop it; he lolls it forward like a heavy rock and pushes it back up again. And in the most connecting gesture, he raises his arms and makes eye contact with viewers: it’s somewhere between a wave and a salute, a direct honouring of the people who have taken a moment to watch his work.

It’s difficult to engage fully with Solo 30x30 because of its fragmented feel—one that, not surprisingly, finds viewers coming and going. Five-fifteen is an interesting time to be doing the performance: unlike noon, it’s an hour when everyone’s got somewhere to go. But there are moments when it’s transporting to see this human being, dwarfed by concrete towers and stopping crowds, investing himself entirely in creating dance in his taped-off square. At times, he becomes the ultimate symbol of the artist.