Choregraphy
Josef Nadj
Performers
Johan Bichot, Ivan Fatjo, Grégory Feurté, Eric Fessenmeyer, Peter Gemza, Anastasia Hvan, Panagiota Kallimani, Anne-Sophie Lancelin, Lazare, Cécile Loyer, Josef Nadj, Emanuela Nelli, Marlène Rostaing
Original music
Alain Mahé
Piano recording and toy piano
Emmanuelle Tat
Lights
Rémi Nicolas
assisted by Lionel Colet
Costumes
Françoise Yapo
Mask and prop design
Jacqueline Bosson
Set and props
Clément Dirat, Julien Fleureau
Coproduction
Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans – Festival International de Théâtre Tchekhov à Moscou (Russie) – Théâtre de la Ville – Paris (France).
Supports
Région Centre, Centre Culturel Français de Moscou, Mairie de Moscou, Ministère de la Culture russe, Institut français, Scène Nationale d’Orléans
Creation
Festival International de Théâtre Anton Tchekhov – Moscou (Russie), july 2010
Duration
88 min
Several writers and several literary works have nourished Cherry-Brandy – starting with Anton Chekhov and his Swan Song, a “dramatic study in one act”, as well as the account he wrote in 1893 on the living conditions of deportees in The Island of Sakhalin – but also Varlam Shalamov, Petrarch and Paul Celan. Nevertheless, the central figure of this creation is the poet Ossip Mandelstam (1891-1938), who was also a translator and essayist. Author of Tristia, The Din of Time, the marvellous Conversation about Dante and Voronezh Notebooks, he considered words as inseparable from the body, the voice and gesture. And he attributed to them a concrete and active power. He was also, for this reason itself, a man committed to his time. His politically-influenced works – and in particular his Stalin Epigram, veritable accusation against the “Montagnard of the Kremlin” – were the cause of his tragic destiny: victim of the Stalinist purges, he died of exhaustion, spent from long months of humiliation and privation during his transfer to the Gulag.
Shalamov explicitly dedicated one of his Kolyma Tales to Ossip Mandelstam. Under the title “Cherry-Brandy”, he describes a dying poet, a dying man who remains a poet to his last breath. The ideal example of the “absolute and uncompromising poet”, in the eyes of Josef Nadj. In other words, an artist dedicated to his art, everywhere and forever.
With his Cherry-Brandy, an austere and sombre piece where the protagonists seem immersed in a “hypnotic slumber”, Nadj in turn pays tribute to Mandelstam – notably in giving voice to several of his poems. But above all, even while Nadj revisits the question of time that has run through all his works from Comedia Tempio (1990) to Sho-bo-gen-zo (2008), this time the choreographer does so from a political perspective, bringing to the stage the conflict between light and darkness, signing his name to a parable concerning the role and the responsibility of the artist confronting his own time and vis-à-vis his contemporaries…
Myriam Bloedé, translated into English by David Vaughn
History :
9 octobre 2011
Festival de Budapest
Budapest (HUN)
4 octobre 2011
Le Grand T
Nantes (FR)
6-9 janvier 2011
Onassis Cultural Centre
Athènes (GR)
10 décembre 2010
Stadsschouwburg
Bruges (BE)
26-31 octobre 2012
Théâtre de la Ville
Paris (FR)
13-15 octobre 2012
Scène Nationale d’Orléans
Orléans (FR)
11-13 juillet 2010
Festival international de Théâtre A. Tchekhov, Music Hall
St Petersbourg (RU)
5-7 juillet 2010
Festival international de Théâtre A. Tchekhov, Atelier Fomenko
Moscou (RU)
