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There are eight of them, in jackets and black trousers, a nod to Josef Nadj’s timeless silhouette. In lending them his costume, he commits each dancer not to walk in his footsteps, but to reveal his own singularity. Above all, OMMA is a story of sharing and passing on.

 

In this new work, the Hungarian choreographer has put together a group of eight dancers hailing from Mali, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Congo Brazzaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The piece is steeped in as many influences, movements, cultures and stories. Together, they form one single body – black, or fekete, as they proclaim… in Hungarian. A plural body in which each affirms his own language, identity, his own dance : a captivating feedback loop between group and individual that leads us, inevitably, to the human being as universal.

 

A true ensemble took shape during a creative process full of trust, sharing and respect, so much so that the audience cannot ignore each performer’s pleasure and generosity or the harmony emanating from the collective. OMMA’s strength lies in the involvement of the group and the truthfulness of the piece they created together. For Josef Nadj, it was necessary to focus on bodies and movement, keeping only what is essential. This principle of simplicity extends both to the stage itself, kept deliberately bare, and to the sound design- a world of breaths, voices, silences and heady jazz rhythms. Onstage, bodies, light, and sound are enough, without artifice.

 

Can the piece be called organic? OMMA undoubtedly hails back to the roots of dance, with movement as its essence and the universe as its horizon. In other words, OMMA is a choreographic origin quest, seeking to demonstrate Josef Nadj’s hypothesis: dance was born alongside humanity. And if so, does going back to the source of dance and movement not equate to going back to the origin of the universe? It is with this in mind that the choreographer shapes the raw materials provided by his dancers and constructs with them and their bodies a dance that is shared, plural, and resolutely universal.

 

Josef Nadj has embarked his artists on a voyage to the roots of dance that might reveal the equilibrium of our universe. Echoing the circle of life, this new choreographic piece looks into something essential: our ability to look at what’s in front of us so we can better see what lies deep within us, in a common destiny. Hence, OMMA’s ancient Greek meaning shines new light: ‘eye’ but also ‘what is seen or looked at’. There lies an invitation to keep our senses awake so we can better capture this dance, dedicated to the genesis of humanity.

 

 

Marylène Malbert

Season 2023/2024 under construction

 

 

 

Past performances :

 

09 > 10 february 2021 – PREMIERE ! 

Les Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg

Luxembourg (LU)

 

09> 10 june 2021

Les Nuits de Fourvière – in complicity with the Biennale de la danse de Lyon

Lyon (FR)

 

09> 11 july 2021

Festival de Almada

Almada (PT)

 

17 july 2021

la Scène nationale d’Orléans

Orléans (FR)

 

29 > 30 july 2021

Biennale di Venezia

Venice (IT)

 

23 > 24 august 2021

FITS – Sibiu International Theater Festival

Sibiu (RO)

 

12 september 2021

FIAT – Festival of international alternative theater

Podgorica (ME)

 

15 > 16  september 2021

Eleusis 2023 european capital of culture & aeschylia festival

Elevsis (GR)

 

2 october 2021

Mess Festival

Sarajevo (BA)

 

20 > 24, 26, 30, 31 october 2021

MC93 – Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis

Bobigny (FR)

 

27 october 2021

Charleroi Danse Biennale

Charleroi (BE)

 

9 november 2021

Le Trident – scène nationale de Cherbourg-en-Cotentin

Cherbourg-en-Cotentin (FR)

 

19 november 2021

Desire Central Station Festival

Subotica (SRB)

 

21 november 2021

Pannon Várszínház

Veszprém (HU)

 

2 décembre 2021

Les Salins – scène nationale de Martigues

Martigues (FR)

 

14 décembre 2021

Le Grand angle

Voiron (FR)

 

21 january 2022

Théâtre Romain Rolland

Villejuif (FR)

 

2 march 2022

Théâtre des quatre saisons

Gradignan (FR)

 

4 march 2022

Espace Jéliote

Oloron-sainte-Marie (FR)

 

March 2022

MASA

Abidjan (CI)

 

22 > 23 march 2022

La Comédie de Valence

Valence (FR)

 

6 > 7 april 2022

Théâtre de Lorient

Lorient (FR)

 

29 > 30 april 2022

Tropiques Atrium

Martinique (FR)

 

12 may 2022

Le Grrranit

Belfort (FR)

 

19 may 2022

Théâtre du Passage

Neuchâtel (CH)

 

25 may 2022

Feszt Festival

Timisoara (RO)

 

23 june 2022

Teatro Due

Parme (IT)

 

28 june 2022

Flow Festival

Sfântu Gheorghe (RO)

 

2 > 3 july 2022

Colours Festival

Stuttgart (AL)

 

15 july 2022

Korespondance Festival

Zdar (RT)

 

27>28>29 july 2022

Paris l’Eté

Paris (FR)

 

24 september 2022

Théâtre d’Arles

Arles (FR)

 

14 october 2022

Théâtre Durance

Château Arnaoux (FR)

 

08 november 2022

Théâtre François Ponsard

Vienne (FR)

 

19 november 2022

Interferences Festival

Cluj (RO)

 

24 november 2022

Institut Français de Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis (SE)

 

26 november 2022

Institut Français de Dakar

Dakar (SE)

 

30 november 2022

Institut Français de Brazaville

Brazzaville (CO)

 

02 december 2022

Institut Français de Kinshasa

Kinshasa (RDC)

 

20&22 JANUARY 2023

EMILIA ROMAGNA TEATRO FONDAZIONE

BOLOGNE (IT)

 

07&08 FEBRUARY 2023

FESTIVAL TEMPORADA ALTA

LIMA (PE)

 

11 FEBRUARY 2023

LES HALLES DE SCHAERBEEK

BRUXELLES (BE)

 

23 FEBRUARY 2023

LE MOULIN DU ROC

NIORT (FR)

 

16 MAY 2023

THÉATRE JEAN-ARP

CLAMART (FR)

 

12 JUNE 2023

Dance Week Festival

ZAGREB (CR)

 

01&02 JULY 2023

Varosmajori Festival

BUDAPEST (HU)

 

24 AUGUST 2023

SAGUNT A ESCENA

VALENCIA (ES)

 

Season 2024 still under construction

For the choreographer Josef Nadj, frequently described by the media as a stage magician, the revival of his first piece Canard Pékinois (1987) represents a birth of a new creative cycle – for the first time in his career he is stepping of the stage, behind the scenes and away from the stage lights, to give way to these six young interpreters.

At the heart of Dark Union is a tragic story of newlyweds who only manage to live a few fleeting moments of happiness before the impermanence of life steps between them. Nadj and the dancers try to evoke the gloomy emotion accompanying this sad relationship, which became almost legendary in his home town. The event that Josef witnessed as a child acts like a projection in his choreography serves as a metaphor for the passing of time and eventually leads us to the beyond. Nadj sees this new work as an opportunity for the new generation to face the core subjects of the story.

History :

 

20-23 june 2019 – cancelled

MC93

Bobigny (FR)

 

4 april 2019 – cancelled

Le Parvis

Tarbes (FR)

 

8 february 2019 – cancelled

Le Trident

Cherbourg-en-Cotentin (FR)

 

23 novembre 2018

Desiré Central Station Festival

Subotica (SRB)

 

14 novembre 2018

Zagreb Dance Center

Zagreb (HR)

 

24 octobre 2018

Španski Borci Cultural Centre

Ljubljana (SL)

 

12 octobre 2018

Municipal Theater of PO Hviezdoslav

Bratislava (SK)

 

24 septembre 2018

Španski Borci Cultural Centre

Ljubljana (SL)

 

20 juillet 2018

Dance and Non-verbal theatre festival San Vincenti

San Vincenti (Croatie)

 

14 juillet 2018

Mittelfest

Cividale del Friuli (IT)

 

23 mai 2018

Španski Borci Cultural Centre

Ljubljana (SL)

 

28 avril 2018

Horizont Festival

Miskolc (HU)

 

10-11 avril 2018 (création)

Španski Borci Cultural Centre

Ljubljana (SL)

Penzum: that is the amount of work done in one day and which one has to account for. This term appears in a poem – never yet translated in French nor in English- by Attila József (1905-1937), a prominent Hungarian poet who influenced generations of writers and artists. Among them are Joëlle Léandre, musician, composer and performer and Josef Nadj, choreographer and visual artist. United by a mutual artistic fidelity, they conceived this duo as a tribute to the poet, nine years after their collaboration on Sho-bo-gen-zo.

 

In a mixture of choreography, music and drawing, Penzum stems from an improvisation. It is an “open” piece, as the artists say. Its form is always new, it is constantly written on the spot as a result of a total communion between the performers. By extension, Penzum can be perceived as the performance itself: it shows the work done to express the intensity of Attila József’s words. His poetry never ceases to operate on the heart and mind of both performers. It guides them, inspires them. It is a source of vital energy. And it also announces the tragic destiny of the poet. Don’t we hear the rising sound of a roaring train? Aren’t these rail tracks we see?

 

Just like the mask she is wearing, Joëlle Léandre produces a series of metallic sounds. Right next to her, Josef Nadj and his African mask with feminine features shapes the space in a black dress. But the metamorphosis is not that obvious: it is hidden in the drawings made of coal like many symbols of power. It lies in the sonorous eruption that possesses Josef Nadj who delivers with great force, in his native language, the words of the poet. It happens also, undoubtfully, in the final peaceful, dream-like sequence.

 

Marylène Malbert

Available on tour.

 

 

History :

 

13-15 mars 2019

Pavillon Noir

Aix-en-Provence (FR)

 

20-21 juillet 2018

Kalamata Dance Festival

Kalamata (GR)

 

4-5 juin 2018

Festival La Voix est libre – Lavoir Moderne Parisien

Paris (FR)

 

26 janvier 2018

Mac Orlan – Désordre Festival

Brest (FR)

 

2 décembre 2017

Desiré Central Station Festival

Subotica (SRB)

 

14 novembre 2017

Festival D’jazz Nevers

Nevers (FR)

 

25-26 juillet 2017

Festival Mimos

Périgueux (FR)

 

9-10 juillet 2017

Festival KoresponDance

Zdar Nad Sazavou (CZE)

 

4-5 juillet 2017

Festival Open Look

Saint Petersbourg (RU)

At the origin of Pour Dolores, the apparition of a woman’s face, a silent enigmatic presence, insistent, emanating entirely from an ancient mask of painted cardboard. Matt complexion, rough cut features, black hair straightened in kiss-curl at the temple, red lips and sideways gaze. This chance encounter at a flea market and the find itself aroused in Josef Nadj something like an appeal, an injunction: to learn who “Dolorès” was, to give her body, to discover the woman behind this female mask.

Materialising a project that had haunted him for many years, in his quest the choreographer chose to make reference to the Fluxus movement. Born in the 1960s, this collective of artists (above all musicians, but also visual artists and writers) was, along with others who were perhaps less radical, at the origin of performance art. Fluxus extolled continuity between art and life, and saw artistic creation as a vast field of experiences where every artistic discipline could contribute. Among their experimentations, Nadj focused particularly on those valuing brevity and simplicity and ordinariness; those re-examining the environment and objects, with all their characteristics, material and structural; but also the interactions of man with what
surrounds him – modifying perception, questioning received wisdom, disrupting custom and bringing forth from the chaos new harmonies. In the spirit of Fluxus, every human action and every object can generate sound. Every object, no matter what it is, can be “played”. And each sound can be heard as music.

 

Wrought once again from the image of the double, Josef Nadj’s latest piece in duet with Ivan Fatjo is particularly in the continuation of his most recent works, Ozoon (2013) and Paysage inconnu (2014). For while music has always constituted an essential element of composition in the stage work of Nadj, the search for convergence, for the closest possible union or even a veritable fusion between music and dance, were key preoccupations of these pieces created in collaboration with the saxophonist Akosh Szelevényi and the drummer Gildas Etevenard.

 

In a sense, with Pour Dolores, Josef Nadj and Ivan Fatjo have moved “to the other side”. The musicians have deserted the stage, while the “music”, omnipresent in the piece, is now created by the actions of the dancers. And while we notice the presence on stage of a grand piano, a hunting horn and a cello with two bows, there are also – to give birth to this music – surgical instruments, a massive imposing metal plate, a long thin rod, a rubber ball, hemp fibres, a brass helmet, a small spherical bell, a bust of Socrates reflected in an oval mirror, and the teeth of a stuffed wolf… The entire space vibrates and resonates. Yet the keys do not move the hammers which do not strike the strings of the piano, the cello strings are neither plucked nor bowed, and no breath sets the horn to quivering.

 

Paradoxically in this work for the stage, the visual and sound dimensions have taken precedence over the theatrical and choreographic. Placed under the banner of patience and attentiveness, of obstinacy in its artistic exploration, Pour Dolores takes the form of a recital, its programme a cycle of gestural, visual and musical miniatures – 24 in number, like the hours of the day. A recital dedicated to an anonymous woman, a certain Dolores.

 

Myriam Bloedé

History :

 

6 février 2016

Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite

Almada (PT)

 

4 décembre 2015

Théâtre de la tête noire

Saran (FR)

 

9 octobre 2015

Emmetrop

Bourges (FR)

 

30 mai 2015

Festival La Voix est libre

Paris (FR)

 

27-29 mai 2015

Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans

Orléans (FR)

Created far from any literary or artistic allusion, Paysage inconnu is based on extended improvisation pushed to the point of exhaustion. The concept of landscape is understood metaphorically, an inner landscape, a mental landscape, infinitely changing like life itself, to be constantly rediscovered. Nevertheless the exploration of this territory is a collective adventure aimed at finding – beyond words – an “other shared language”. An adventure shaped by two essential motifs. First the motif of the double, defined as much by resemblance as by complementarity, which immediately imposes itself in the coexistence and stage presence of the two dancers and the two musicians, in the relationship between gesture and sound, between music and dance. But also in the interplay of contrast between speed and slowness, amplitude and restraint, suspension and activity, unmalleability and momentum, presence and absence, obscurity and whiteness, tragic and burlesque, joy and melancholia… Closely linked to this image of the double is the second motif of Paysage inconnu, the principle of transformation, mutation, alternation or even of passage, a threshold to cross. Present in the unceasing metamorphosis, as subtle as it may be, of a landscape unknowable for this very reason, this principle inhabits the piece in relationship to the cycle of life – in precisely the passage from limbo to life, then from life to death, to nothingness, and again to life.
And so, Paysage inconnu is a sort of danse macabre, a vanitas whose introspective or meditative dimension is constantly “menaced” by humour, derision, the grotesque, and irony.

 

Myriam Bloedé

History :

 

4 avril 2016

Théâtre des Quatre Saisons

Gradignan (FR)

 

1^er avril 2016

Espace Jéliote

Oloron-Sainte-Marie (FR)

 

29 mars 2016

Théâtre les Sept Collines

Tulle (FR)

 

8 décembre 2015

La Halle aux Grains

Blois (FR)

 

8 novembre 2015

Festival Euro Scene

Leipzig (DE)

 

5-6 décembre 2014

Opéra de Dijon

Dijon (FR)

 

1^er décembre 2014

Festival Interférences

Cluj (RO)

 

2-4 octobre 2014

Scène nationale d’Orléans

Orléans (FR)

 

17-25 septembre 2014

Festival Temps d’images, Centquatre

Paris (FR)

 

29 juillet 2014

L’Odyssée, scène coventionnée de Périgueux

Périgueux (FR)

 

16-17 juillet 2014

Teatro Municipal Joaquim Benite

Almada (PT)

 

17 mai 2014

Centre chorégraphique national d’Orléans

Orléans (FR)

Piece inspired by his encounter with Charles Fréger, author of the book Les Wilder Mann ou la Figure du sauvage, published by Thames & Hudson.

 

“The thought of humans, no matter which epoch they belong to, no matter to which cult they make sacrifices, and even when they try to defend themselves, is full of beasts, since the dawn of time we are visited, invaded, crossed by animals or their ghosts. What Deleuze and Guattari formalized under the label of “devenir-animal” [becoming animal], is nothing but a mapping of exceptional transferences, these are not “special cases”, it is a generalized exposure of humanity to its first sources, it is peopling the mind by that which surrounds it and which perhaps it no longer sees, no longer wants to see.”

 

Jean-Christophe Bailly, Le versant animal, published by Bayard

History :

 

26-27 juin 2014

Grande Halle de la Villette

Paris (FR)

 

3-5 juin 2014

Scène nationale d’Orléans

Orléans (FR)

 

9-10 avril 2014

Théâtre Anne de Bretagne

Vannes (FR)

 

13-14 avril 2013

La Briqueterie, 17^e Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne

Vitry-sur-Seine (FR)

 

21-22 mars 2013

Théâtre Jacques Brel, 17^e Biennale de danse du Val-de-Marne

Fontenay-sous-Bois (FR)

The first challenge in Atem is its scenography: a small theatre where the audience is represented by seven rows of seating, accomodating about sixty people, while the stage consists of an elevated “black box” of small size (four meters wide and three meters deep), a cramped parallelepiped whose apparent simplicity masks the presence of escape hatches, openings, passages, niches or false bottoms. A construction both spectacular and intimate, which encompasses the audience and immediately raises two questions. One concerns the relationship between the two dancers, “how to occupy and inhabit such a small space together?” The second is based on the stage-audience relationship resulting from this particular scenography, specifically concerning proximity as a condition of viewing. Which is magnified because the lighting – exclusively by candlelight – forces the viewer to the most extreme attentiveness.

 

From these concrete specifics, these material choices and the reflection they provoked, Josef Nadj decided to focus on “details, objects, clues, and small signs” to revive and extend a few recurring issues from his artistic universe – the exploration of materials and their transformation, the reference to natural elements and the cosmos, and last and above all the question of time, cyclic or linear, whose “inexorable passage clashes with eternity.”
The second challenge Josef Nadj has launched with Atem is a sort of return to the sources of his artistic inspiration, in addressing for the first time the work of two artists who have always “accompanied” him, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) – specifically his engravings, and the poet Paul Celan, the rereading of whom during the creation of this new work led Josef to catch sight of multiple echoes or extensions in the poems to Dürer’s engravings.

 

An exercise in lucidity, in unveiling, Atem proposes a reading of one of Dürer’s major works, Melencolia I (1514), a copper engraving of great complexity which has been, and remains to this day, “subject to infinite interpretations” (H. Wölfflin). There is of course nothing didactic in the light Josef Nadj sheds on this work – for him the question is to “gather” elements, isolate them, move them around, recombine and bring them into resonance with details found or borrowed from other prints by Dürer, as well as with the verses of Paul Celan, composing a new image, moving and living, a tableau in which movement challenges vision, while simultaneously revealing it, a guide for the eye.

 

Myriam Bloedé, translated into English by David Vaughn

History :

 

16-19 avril 2014

Pavillon Noir

Aix en Provence (FR)

 

20-24 novembre 2013

L’Arsenal, Biennale de danse en Lorraine

Metz (FR)

 

15-17 novembre 2013

Théâtre de l’Archipel, Scène Nationale

Perpignan (FR)

 

3-28 avril 2013

Le Centquatre

Paris (FR)

 

15-19 janvier 2013

Théâtre de l’Union, CDN

Limoges (FR)

 

12-16 décembre 2012

Scène Nationale

Orléans (FR)

 

21-25 novembre 2012

TNSJ

Porto (PT)

 

2-4 novembre 2012

Associazione Teatrale Emilia Romagna

Reggio Emilia (IT)

 

21-27 juillet 2012

Saint Saturnin-lès-Avignon, Festival d’Avignon

Avignon (FR)

 

12-18 juillet 2012

Salle polyvalente de Saze, Festival d’Avignon

Avignon (FR)