Belgrade



"Untitled" is name of the show by Joseph Nagy, premiered at the Prague Quadrennial and Ohrid Summer to be presented to Belgrade audience under the "region in focus" of 45th BITEF Festival. Nagy is one of the most important and award-winning choreographer, director and dancer in Europe, and certainly our most famous theater artist. Joseph Nagy slips through the dark, opens the door of unconscious or some blurry edge of illusion and reality, to explore the links that, or maybe a tie that connects him with another space of time. With this little drama, he confronts a box alike stage, a claustrophobic primitive space with shadows and secret illusions invisible on the black set, gathered along the path twinkle. This man's eternal quest for truth, his efforts to reconcile being in true harmony and to show that the entire universe, in fact is a dream. Nagy tells with excellent mime, movement and music, as with previous work with colleagues Cecil fat, Joel Leandro and Akosh Szelevényi. This time in Untitled he works with beautiful French partner Anne Sophie Lancelin. The body moves about in tiny tinkles and almost staggers against. He is like a ghost of a dance reared in the splash of spiritual intoxication, like a true purgative spirit that comes from the other world, divine and diabolical at the same time. At its stage climax, in an extraordinary process of transformation that “crows hold powerful sway over the human imagination”.


Not rarely Nagy bring up Zen and Buddhism in his work, for him this is not just a distant concept but more than thirty years of regularly reading Zen masters ”what inspires me is the great mystery of the Far Eastern scholars,” once said Nagy. What he is worried about is the disappearance of harmony and the humanities, some liberal ideas that reflect his work. Where it takes us senseless life? This culture and its way of seeing the world tell us different ways of interpretation of terms that are very important, especially today, such as truth, universality, continuity, timelessness, immortality, the absoluteness, and spiritual values. The chaos that we live today, we have created to endpoints and we went to the absurd the deepest possible exaggeration of all. Our quest was to find that moment in which something is converted into the absolute opposite of harmony, rather, the opposite of nature, the essence of life, man, creation, and humanistic ideas. His work in general is an attempt to make a connection through improvisation between two worlds, a two ways of thinking, and to show where we all are today. We all have same settings, same way of thinking, symbols, fetishes, some minor values, especially new generations. Differences in the absurd world at the beginning of a new century are no more news. The magnificent Nagy was never out of focus, no matter how long he was away from the border region of ex Yugoslavia. He stayed consistent to its creation and the works that brought him the highest awards - the European Theater Award, Order of French Knight of Culture, the "Golden Mask" in Russia, the prizes at festivals in Avignon, Hamburg, Cividale, 4 awards of Bitef Festival, the latest Politika Award on Bitef Festival 2011. Jozsef Nagy in 80s went away from his native Kanizsa in Vojvodina region first to Novi Sad to finish art school. Then to study in Budapest where again he studied art history and music, and then to Paris to study with the famous Marcel Marso. In Paris he discovered dance, where he started to share the different choreographic worlds of Mark Tompkins, Catherine Diverres and Franois Verret. In his early work, he underlined the duality of an approach mixing theater and dance and that became a ground level preparing for an internationally recognized oeuvre. Since 1995, he has been the director of the Centre Choregraphique National d‘Orléans.


Art movement, acting, theater, graphics are diverse and varied interest of his famous art-self. The most well known and welcomed he would be in France, his second homeland, where he immigrated in 80s. Joseph Nagy ’s work has been a highlight of LIMF programmes since his Woyzeck in 1999, in 2008 with Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo in the LIMF / Barbicanbite co-presentation of Paso Doble, done at the Venice Biennale. He is a painter, sculptor, dancer, and director of France’s National Choreographic Centre in Orléans. Akosh Szelevényi, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist, has collaborated on numerous projects with Joseph Nagy since 2003. He also composes music for theatre and dance.


Past achievements have brought him fame and recognition around the world, however, it heralds the return of Kanizsa and some plain old works, but the area of this choreographies, in which the artist An-Sophie Lanselen deals in choreography is esthetic and philosophical exploration of intimacy, as the author says that it is precisely this "uneasiness" that offers great possibilities.

C.E.-Tell us about the space in process of Untitled?
J.N.-“It is about the space we had been given, as well as the main subject. I realized that I would work in micro-details but not on spectacular images. First I tried the white area, which I wanted to highlight with candles. However, it turns out that this does not suit us, and we all painted over in black! White color is for a small space, but we needed depth - black. Always starts at the emotions, listening to a personal sensibility that I make my metaphor. To do spectacle: there is in fact something that comes to the intimate chamber musical scene. “

C.E.-Many contemporary directors fell into the trap of new technologies, mesmerized by their capabilities, this is not case with Nagy?
J.N.- “These technologies have become affordable for everyone, too many are used. Eventually everyone will figure it out. I had reservations from the beginning of seeing how the music computers did not give nothing, or very little ... The only thing that makes me happy are very sensitive microphones that can "catch" sounds almost silent in nature. In addition, in nature can be found the roots of all laws and inspiring to compare them with the theater thinking. In each theater has its own creation, no one no one can take any space or freedom. So I feel that the future of the poor theater: the less technical, more body and natural materials. Personally, I want to explore more deeply what the water, fire, and stone - on the stage.”

C.E.-You announced a new phase in your research work, dealing with masks and puppets?
J.N.- “Although I have "touched" masks and puppets in some earlier works, yet it will be paid more attention on it in the future. Moreover, I want to renew some of their old shows, and here and in France. I am interested in how to look after twenty years, since I never see any of their recordings. I have some kind of memory, but I am very interested to examine the motives and forms. ”

C.E.- One of the determinants of Nagy’s performance, even though you worked abroad is the spirit of Kanizsa in Vojvodina where you are back after long time of living abroad?
J.N.- “I went from home in the 18th year, and after 25 years spent abroad, I already miss the physical relationship to space and the nature of my birth, even though I, all these years, kept somewhere in me. I did not want to give up roots, the whole world has built on its opposition to the outside world, and for me the circle of my life and my career is closed. Now I have a physical need to be in Kanizsa, go to sleep, to wake up to breathe and smell, and it is for me new inspiration. I am here, to "spot" of his birth, and their starting circle. But, still travel with their performances, some work in co-production with my theater in Orléans, and Regional Creative Atelier in Kanjiža who gathers the most gifted artists lead all nations in this region and from abroad. I do not like the terms multi-ethnic, multicultural, so I'll have to invent new ones. “