Piece by Josef Nadj

Argument

"… the rock which went to the wind near us rolls on the sea
and in the wake it leaves behind, living, the dream opens"

                                      Paul Celan, “Ensemble” 

Prague, June 2011 – Box #15

      At the origin of this duo is Josef Nadj’s invitation to the 12th Prague Quadrennial (June 16-26, 2011), an international festival dedicated to set design as “an artistic discipline at the junction of the visual and performing arts,” bringing together expositions and live performances. More specifically, the project in which Josef Nadj was asked to participate in this context, the major happening of the event, was entitled “Intersection: Intimacy and Performance,” and consisted of modular architecture installed in public spaces in the center of Prague, a temporary pathway composed of thirty “black boxes or white cubes” of which each element, each
module, was taken over by an artist – set designer, visual artist, photographer, videographer, director, choreographer, or fashion designer.
 
      In response to this invitation, Josef Nadj constructed a black box, Box #15 in the circuit, whose base is four by four meters with a stage space three meters deep and, separated from this space by a glass window, a passage or gallery one meter wide reserved for visitors. Then, in collaboration with Anne-Sophie Lancelin, he
developed a short piece on the theme of intimacy, “the intimacy between two beings, a man and a woman,” but also “between a man and his roots, his native land with its trees, its river, its inhabitants…”. Finally, the intimacy that grows between an artist and his audience “through dance, drawings, scenic images,” reinforced in this instance by the proximity of being in such a limited space.

Atem, the art of detail

      An extension of the Prague project, Atem maintains the same stage setup, with all its constraints and implications: a “black box” of reduced dimensions, raised and opened frontally this time, with a few clearings, passages, openings, niches, chinks, secret compartments or traps, hardly perceptible to the eye. As for the audience space, the corridor where Prague’s public remained standing, it has been upgraded to a set of seven rows of bleachers, ready to receive about sixty seated spectators and to guarantee them full visibility of the stage. The ensemble forms a small theater, light, easily deconstructed and transported, which can be installed
indoors or outdoors, and can fit inside on the stage of a medium-sized theater.
 
      Using this intimate-dramatic structure as a foundation, Josef Nadj’s reflections were oriented in two directions. One is about the relationship between the two dancers: “How to inhabit, how to live together in such a small space?” The other relates to the relationship between the stage and the audience, created by this particular structure, otherwise to a gaze informed by proximity. All the more so as the lighting, provided only by candles, lamps, forces the spectator to pay extremely close attention as the dimly-lit scene, plunged in diffused light, alludes to the history of theater. These two axes of reflection led Josef Nadj to concentrate on the “details,
objects, clues, little signs.”

Dürer, Celan, returning to fundamentals

      This new piece, in which Nadj continues his companionship with dancer Anne-Sophie Lancelin and sound designer Alain Mahé, marks the reprise of certain tones and a few of the recurring themes of his universe, shown particularly through his work with materials and their transformation, a reference to the elements and
the cosmos, and especially the constant re-questioning of time, cyclical and linear, whose “inescapable flow contradicts eternity”: “one would have to be able to stop time,” he says, “in order for us mortals to understand something about eternity.”
      However, beyond the “revisiting” or redeployment of motifs present in his previous works, Atem seems to constitute for Nadj a sort of return to his fundamentals, which is to say a return to the sources of his artistic inspiration. It is indeed the case, as he declares, “painting attracted me even before literature or music.” Dürer is one of the first – if not the first – artist that he mentions among those whose work he knew as a child, and who have influenced him in the long term. And so, for the first time and with a precise approach, he has decided to turn toward the engraving work of Albrecht Dürer for this duet. He did, however, also feel the need to read Paul Celan again throughout the course of this creative process, Celan being a poet who has accompanied and “lighed” him since his adolescence. In addition, he found in certain poems by Celan many echoes and interpretations related to Dürer’s engravings.

A moving painting

"Disfigured – a renewed angel ceases to exist – a face achieves itself" 

                       Paul Celan, “Dazibao”

      An exercise in lucidity, in unveiling, Atem proposes an interpretation of one of Dürer’s major works, Melencolia I (1514), a very complex copper engraving which has been and remains, even today, the “subject of infinite interpretations” (H. Wölfflin). Among these, the ones which stand out first – at least, because they are immediately meaningful for Nadj – are those which see in the engraving a representation of creative thought. Then, come those which include three other engravings, which the choreographer also examined: Saint Jerome in his Cell (1513) and Knight, Death and the Devil (1514), which date from the same period, as well as Adam and Eve (1504). Finally, those interpretations which invite the
viewer to doubt the surface of things, the image as it first appears to the viewer.
      Nothing didactic, of course, in Josef Nadj’s approach to this work or the
perspective he offers: for him, it is about “collecting” the elements, isolating the details, moving them around, combining them in new ways, making them echo the details of Dürer’s other engravings (whether shared or not with the first), and also
Celan’s lines, to create a new image, a moving one, which is to say a tableau in which movement questions vision, even as it reveals the former, and becomes a guide for the eye.

                                                                                                 Myriam Bloedé.

Credits

Mise en scène, chorégraphie et scénographie Josef Nadj Musique originale Alain Mahé assisté de Pascal Seixas Interprétation Anne-Sophie Lancelin, Josef Nadj Musiciens Alain Mah é ou Pascal Seixas Costumes Aleksandra Pesic Accessoires Laszlo Dobo Régie générale Alexandre de Monte Construction du décor Clément Dirat, Julien Fleureau 

Durée environ 75 minutes

Josef Nadj was born in 1957 in Kanjiza, a province of Vojvodina in the former Yugoslavia, in what is today Serbia. Beginning in childhood, he drew, practiced wrestling, accordeon, soccer and chess, intending a career in painting. Between the ages of 15 and 18, he studied at the fine arts high school of Novi Sad (the capital of Vojvodina), followed by 15 months of military service in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Afterwards, he left to study art history and music at the Academy of Fine Arts and at the University of Budapest, where he also began studying physical expression and acting.

In 1980, he left for Paris to continue his training with Marcel Marceau, Etienne Ducroux. Simultaneously he discovered modern dance, at the time in a period of swift expansion in France. He followed the teachings of Larri Leong (who combined dance, kimomichi and aidido) and Yves Cassati, also taking classes in tai-chi, butoh and contact improvisation (with Mark Tompkins), began himself to teach the movement arts in 1983 (in France and Hungary), and participated as a performer in works by Sidonie Rochon (Papier froissé, 1984), Mark Tompkins (Trahison Men, 1985), Catherine Diverrès (l’Arbitre des élégances, 1988) and François Verret (Illusion comique and La, commissioned by the GRCOP, 1986).

In 1986 he founded his company, Théâtre JEL – “jel” meaning “sign” in Hungarian – and created his first work, Canard Pékinois, presented in 1987 at the Théâtre de la Bastille and remounted the following year at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

Up to now, he is the author of about thirty performances.

In 1982, Josef Nadj completely abandoned drawing and painting to dedicate himself fully to dance, and would not begin showing his work again until fifteen years later. But in 1989 he began practicing photography, pursuing it without interruption to the present. Since 1996, his visual arts and graphic works, most often conceived in cycles or series – sculpture-installations, drawings, photos – have been regularly exhibited in galleries and theatres.

In 2006, Josef Nadj was Associated Artist for the 60th Festival of Avignon, presenting Asobu as the festival's opening performance in the Court of Honour of the Palais des Papes, as well as Paso doble, a performance created in collaboration with the painter Miquel Barcelo at the Celestins Church. In July 2010, he returned to present Les Corbeaux, a duet with Akosh zelevényi.

To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Chekhov, Valery Shadrin, director of the Chekhov International Theatre Festival and Artistic Director of the Year 2010 France-Russia, invited Josef Nadj for the creation of a show dedicated to the playwright, which was performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Josef Nadj was present at the Prague Quadrennial of 16 to 26 June 2011. TheQuadrennial held in Prague since 1967, is the most famous event in the world for performing arts. More than sixty countries attended this year. Josef Nadj was selected to participate in the project "Intersection" based on intimacy and performance. An ephemeral village was created, which consisted of boxes (“white cubes / black boxes") that stood for thirty world-renowned artists, each one represented by a different box. Since 1995, Josef Nadj has been the director of the Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans.

Source : Josef Nadj

En savoir plus : http://josefnadj.com/