Performances
Apr 23
Performance Run Time: 65 minutes, no intermission.
Audience Advisory: This performance includes simulated violence and loud drums.
Acclaimed, multi–Olivier Award winning choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui pieces together a mosaic drawn from the animate and inanimate elements of the desert in Nomad. From the dance floor, we get glimpses of the fluidity and adaptability of creatures that thrive in the harshest of conditions; the beautiful transience of sand dunes and winds that change direction, shape, and speed in the twinkling of an eye; the intense physical and emotional thirst — the yearning for water, safety; and the consolation that guides both animal actions and the human quest for spirituality. Above all, Nomad displays the spirit of togetherness, friendship, and symbiosis key to survival and evolution in an arid world that would be insurmountable alone.
For Nomad, Cherkaoui builds on partnerships with longstanding collaborators and the depth of his repertoire for this profoundly integrated production. After Qutb and Mosaic, it is the third piece with music by Basement Jaxx artist Felix Buxton. It also is the third collaboration with fashion designer Jan-Jan Van Essche, after Icon and Satyagraha. His costumes for Nomad are inspired by the richness of fabrics that inhabitants of the desert wear to protect themselves from the heat. And just like in Faun, there is a giant image filling the back of the stage — not a forest this time, but a desert. This desolate landscape is a metaphor for ultimate freedom, but also the impossibility of survival. The set transports audience members, feeling that this landscape is not in our own trusted world, especially when the animated backdrop shows the earth floating above the horizon like a moon. The dancing nomads appear isolated in this environment, a metaphor for how the world today sometimes seems like a desert, a dangerous place to be.
“A piece between fantasy and nightmare. The dance is organic, yet inventive: the choreographer forges a vocabulary of his own, borrowing elements from hip-hop, martial arts, contemporary dance, with arms and torsions like sensual calligraphies flowing through the dancers’ bodies” — Le Figaro Culture (translated)
