“My mind thinks of my mind.
My history is foreign to me.
My name surprises me and my body is idea.
What I was is with all the others.
And I am not even what I am going to be.” 

                                        Paul Valéry

      Intimate, imprinted with gentleness and complicity, Petit psaume du matin carries the traces of the circumstances surrounding its creation. First conceived as a solo, the piece in fact stems from Dominique Mercy (the exceptional dancer and travelling companion to Pina Bausch) commissioning a piece from Josef Nadj. But during the course of rehearsing, Nadj rapidly felt the desire to abandon the strict role of choreographer that had been attributed to him, to dance along beside his “sponsor”… And so the initial solo became a duet.

      Born from the confrontation between the two men, nourished by the dialogue established between them, it is precisely the image of the double and the experience of sharing that Petit psaume du matin treats. Resemblances are evoked, possible points of identification between Dominique Mercy and Josef Nadj, for example their experiences as dancers, their shared taste for travel and Oriental theatre. But even beyond this, the piece evokes the foundation of their relationship – their complementarity – manifest in the physicality of each one and in their respective ways of dancing,flowing and airbound for one, more earthy and rooted for the
other –and their reciprocal intelligence, their capacity to listen and exchange, even beyond their differences – their mutual understanding playfully put into practice by way of a surprising dialogue in twenty-four languages.

     Hymn to friendship as well as the story of an encounter, of a budding friendship, this duet takes up the question of mastery acquired through practice, and so also evokes the aging of a dancer's body. In this sense, Petit psaume du matin is a mature piece.

                                          Myriam Bloedé

Credits

Chorégraphie : Josef Nadj 
Musiques traditionnelles : Cambodge, Macédoine, Roumanie, Egypte, Hongrie, Michel Montanaro : extrait de « Maria », Igor Stravinsky « Tango » - Editions Alphonse Leduc et Compagnie 
Création lumières: Rémi Nicolas assité de Xavier Lazarini 
Costumes : Bjanka Ursulov 
Equipe technique en tournée 
Direction technique, régie générale et son : Steven Le Corre 
Régie lumières : Thierry Bouilhet 
Danseurs : Dominique Mercy et Josef Nadj 
Production et diffusion : Martine Dionisio

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/