Jeanne Renaud, a pioneer of modern dance in Quebec, was a part of the Automatist movement led by Paul-Émile Borduas. On April 3, 1948, five months before the publication of Refus Global (Total Refusal), she and Françoise Sullivan created the famous Spectacle de danse at the Ross House. A $$ little later, she and her friend Françoise Riopelle founded the École de danse moderne de Montréal and then the Groupe de la Place Royale in 1966, of which she was artistic director until 1971. She then went to establish Galerie III, a space devoted to visual art. She was also co-artistic director of the Grands Ballets Canadiens. She received the Denise Pelletier award in 1989, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award in 1995 and an Honorary Doctorate in art from Concordia University in 1997. She was received into the Order of Canada in 1998.