JOSEF NADJ 
MNÉMOSYNE

20, 21 & 22.7
Kalamata Dance Megaron - Main Stage (backstage)
20 & 21.7 [12:00 & 14:00 & 19:00 & 23:50]
22.7 [12:00 & 14:00 & 19:00 & 21:00] | 20΄

19 → 23.7.2019
PHOTO EXHIBITION
19:00-22:00
19.7 | Opening | 21:00
Kalamata Dance Megaron - Lobby

 

A performance and photography project

Mnémosyne expresses the memory of a world: the world of choreographer and visual artist Josef Nadj. Thirty years after the creation of his first performance, Nadj produces a global piece, both photographic project and theatrical performance. Reclaiming a practice developed alongside his main work, Nadj digs into his own memory to widen once again his creative horizon.
For Mnémosyne he has conceived a large photographic exhibition and a black box. Inside the box, in the intimacy of this camera obscura, Nadj stages himself in a short performance of a rare density, where every movement, every action, every second is an echo of his personal and artistic journey. Around the black box Nadj has imagined a photographic exhibition. Each one of his photographs tells a story, contains a unique memory, known only to the artist. Found objects kept because of their suggestive power, pieces of art that keep inspiring him, and all kinds of souvenirs evoke a relationship to time that spans over many years, from the search for forms to the composition of the images and from the choice of the technique to the actual moment the shot was taken.
A personal tribute to The Atlas, German art historian Aby Warburg’s unfinished project, Mnémosyne is all in all a total piece of art—installation, performance, and exhibition at the same time. Each spectator retains one final image, an impression that questions our vision and our memory.*
The photographic exhibition will be held at the Megaron lobby as part of the performances but also as a separate visual installation.

*From an interview of Josef Nadj by Marylène Malbert

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PERFORMANCE
Concept-Performance: Josef Nadj
Lights: Rémi Nicolas
Set Construction-Τechnical Manager: Sylvain Blocquaux
Music: Peter Vogel, Schubert performed by Emmanuelle Tat
Set Manager: Romuald Liteau-Lego

EXHIBITION
Photographs: Josef Nadj
Artistic Collaboration: Dudás Szabolcs
Framing: Jean-Pierre Haie, Atelier Demi-Teinte
Technical Manager: Sylvain Blocquaux

Production-Τouring: Bureau PLATÔ - Séverine Péan, Emilia Petrakis
Administration: Bureau PLATÔ – Marie de Heaulme
Executive Producer: Atelier 3+1
Co-production: Biennale de la danse de Lyon 2018, Centre Chorégraphique National – Orléans, La Filature Scène Nationale – Mulhouse, Le CENTQUATRE-Paris
With the support of the Ministère de la Culture – Direction générale de la création artistique – Délégation à la Danse, Région Ile-de-France, La Villette-Paris, Résidence Sainte-Cécile-Orléans

The performance and photography project Mnémosyne is presented at 25th Kalamata International Dance Festival with the support of the French Institute.

 

 

 

Josef Nadj is artist-in-residence at the CENTQUATRE-Paris and winner of the international residency programme of the Ville de Paris – Récollets
Creation: 22 September 2018, Biennale de la danse de Lyon – Musée des Beaux-Arts

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Understanding dance above all as a site for encounter, this is how Josef Nadj defines his work. Beyond his role as choreographer, Nadj is an artist without borders and without barriers. Dancer but also visual artist and photographer, his vision of humanity is poetic and passionate.
Constantly in search of new forms, ceaselessly willing to explore humanity as closely as possible to the human truth. Across his career, from Canard pékinois (1987) to Mnémosyne (2018), Nadj has relentlessly pursued exigent and passionate choreography, where gravity and compassion take turns, where depth and humour alternate. Whether he is visiting atypical authors (Beckett, Kafka, Michaux) or bringing painting along with him on stage (in a performance with Miquel Barceló), Nadj flourishes in complete corporal freedom. Oscillating between reality and fantasy, tradition and modernity, he explores the essential: man’s relationship with himself. Because for Nadj, dance is fundamentally a humanist act.
Over the years, the works of Nadj have become reference points in contemporary dance. Acclaimed nationally (Carte Blanche at the Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris in 2014; Associated Artist at the 2006 Avignon Festival, which officially designated him as “creator without borders”), his work is also recognized and celebrated around the globe. Nadj has been enthusiastically received by 400,000 audience members in the most important international venues across five continents. Drawing his inspiration from the depths of the great myths of humanity, passionately intertwining both artistic disciplines and cultural references, Nadj is elaborating a universal language. From 1995 to 2016, Nadj was director of the Centre chorégraphique national d’Orléans. In 2017, he established his new company Atelier 3+1 in Paris.

PHOTO EXHIBITION 
Josef Nadj Mnémosyne

In Mnémosyne, Josef Nadj takes on photography as a performative art, linking and weaving the two arts together. He works with a paradox where the time of the show flows, inevitably, with the flow of life, whereas a photograph, like death, stops time and immobilizes movement. The genesis of a photographic image, with its successive stages—from composing the scene (preparing the set and props, placing and posing of the figures) to shooting and developing the image—in other words the transformation of a staged, three-dimensional scene, into a two-dimensional photograph, is precisely the aim and subject of this piece. In Mnémosyne, this interplay of knowledge and know-how also sheds light on how photography has contributed to the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of knowledge, and how it has influenced our sense of vision, i.e. shaped our view of the world, intervening in history and especially art history.

 

 

Understanding dance above all as a site for encounter, this is how Josef Nadj defines his work. Beyond his role as choreographer, Nadj is an artist without borders and without barriers. Dancer but also visual artist and photographer, his vision of humanity is poetic and passionate. 

Constantly in search of new forms, ceaselessly willing to explore humanity as closely as possible to the human truth. Across his career, from Canard pékinois (1987) to Mnémosyne (2018), Nadj has relentlessly pursued exigent and passionate choreography, where gravity and compassion take turns, where depth and humour alternate. Whether he is visiting atypical authors (Beckett, Kafka, Michaux) or bringing painting along with him on stage (in a performance with Miquel Barceló), Nadj flourishes in complete corporal freedom. Oscillating between reality and fantasy, tradition and modernity, he explores the essential: man’s relationship with himself. Because for Nadj, dance is fundamentally a humanist act.
Over the years, the works of Nadj have become reference points in contemporary dance. Acclaimed nationally (Carte Blanche at the Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris in 2014; Associated Artist at the 2006 Avignon Festival, which officially designated him as “creator without borders”), his work is also recognized and celebrated around the globe. Nadj has been enthusiastically received by 400,000 audience members in the most important international venues across five continents. Drawing his inspiration from the depths of the great myths of humanity, passionately intertwining both artistic disciplines and cultural references, Nadj is elaborating a universal language. From 1995 to 2016, Nadj was director of the Centre chorégraphique national d’Orléans. In 2017, he established his new company Atelier 3+1 in Paris.

PHOTO EXHIBITION
Kalamata Photography Association Bodies in the Light

19 → 28.7.2019  
Kalamata Dance Megaron - Studio Lobby | 19:00-22:00

Photography meets dance. Every ‘click’ captures that magic moment in which the body discovers new ways to express itself, to move and be moved, while the photograph becomes a body dancing in the light.

 

 

Founded in January 2017 and coordinated by Nikos Iliopoulos, the Kalamata Photography Association nurtures the practice of and artistic expression through the art of photography. Since its establishment, the group has collaborated with various institutions in Messenia as well as with groups, associations, and photography clubs across Greece.

JOY ALPUERTO RITTER & LUKAS STELTNER
SHALL WE…?!

22.7.2019
Kalamata Central Square | 21:00

 

Connected by their roots in Urban Dance, Joy Alpuerto Ritter and Lukas Steltner create their pieces drawing from both the dynamic movement of contemporary dance and Bboying as well as tension and other emotional states.

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Performance: Joy Alpuerto Ritter & Lukas Steltner

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Joy Alpuerto Ritter graduated from the Palucca Dance School of Dresden. She has been working as a freelance dancer with Akram Khan, Wangramirez, Christoph Winkler, Heike Hennig, and the Cirque du Soleil. Her versatile background from classical training to Urban Dance techniques has allowed her to develop a unique movement esthetique. She has been creating her own choreographies since 2016.

Lukas Steltner is a German BBoy/breakdancer and actor. He has performed in pieces by Heike Hennig & Company, Hong Nguyen Thai, and Adrian Figueroa, as well as in different variété and circus shows. As an actor, he has appeared in various German television shows and feature films.

SCREENING Louise Lecavalier: In Motion

22.7.2019
Kalamata Dance Megaron - Forecourt | 21:30

SCREENING OF RAYMOND SAINT-JEAN’S DOCUMENTARY
ON THE LIFE OF DANCER LOUISE LECAVALIER

Louise Lecavalier: In Motion
(Louise Lecavalier: Sur son cheval de feu)

The film tells the inspiring story of Canadian dancer Louise Lecavalier, a member of the La La La Human Steps dance company, which was founded in 1980 and disbanded in 2015. An irrepressible artist, Lecavalier revolutionized contemporary dance in the 1980s while working with choreographer Édouard Lock. With Lecavalier as its star dancer, the company collaborated with leading rock musicians, such as David Bowie, Frank Zappa, Skinny Puppy, Einstürzende Neubauten, Kevin Shields, David Van Tieghem, and Carole Laure, among others. Today, at 61, Lecavalier enjoys a successful international solo career. She is a true icon of dance and a unique creator, whose art transcends the human body’s limitations. The film combines spectacular dance sequences, original scores, and exclusive interviews to create an intimate and touching portrait of this inspired artist and her quest for perfect movement.

Starring: Louise Lecavalier, France Bryère, Robert Abubo, Patrick Lamothe, Frédéric Tavernini, Marc Béland, Pierre-Mary Toussaint, Kier Knight, Angelo Barsetti.

The screening of the documentary film Louise Lecavalier: In motion is presented at 25th Kalamata International Dance Festival with the support of the Embassy of Canada.

 

JOY ALPUERTO RITTER
Hybrid Movement Workshop 

19 → 22.7.2019
Kalamata Municipal Stadium

Joy Alpuerto Ritter, performer and choreographer, has been a long collaborator with creators like Akram Khan and Wang Ramirez and therefore greatly influenced in the way she approaches movement in its diversity and depth. Her diverse background in ballet, hip hop, voguing, philippine folk and contemporary dance have made her develop an interesting fusion of different ways of physical expression. Her workshop will focus on body isolation, waving, groove and floor work. Her workshop will also include training for being strongly grounded yet dynamic and sensitive while moving in space. Physical rhythm and musicality will also be practiced in combinations and exercises. The workshop will include improvisational tasks and the dancers will work on various movement concepts and body states as a challenge to engage creativity and to explore individual qualities of expression.

Joy Alpuerto has worked with Akram Khan Company and Honji Wang’s and Sébastien Ramirez‘s company (Wang Ramirez). In the past she was part of Cirque du Soleil. In 2016, she was nominated, at the UK National Dance Awards, for the outstanding female performance award in contemporary dance for the current touring piece “Until the Lions” of Akram Khan Company. Joy has also created her own choreographic work with the solo pieces “Babae” and “Alter Egos”.

 

FRANCISCO CÓRDOVA
Body Action

21 → 27.7.2019
Kalamata Municipal Stadium 

Francisco Córdova, Mexican performer, choreographer and pedagogue, has an educational background in contemporary dance, theatre, direction and stage lighting. He will be giving a workshop on Body Action, a training method he has developed, based on the construction of physical actions. Participants are invited to learn to move through a common language and not through the usual dance codes. The method decodes therefore and deconstructs the established and predetermined languages of the dance. The class is a representation of the function of control and physical intuition and its purpose is to create physical, mental and emotional states through the intense physical work. For doing so, it takes the body to its maximum capabilities through the opening to physically controlled risk. The participants are guided to learn to assume information regarding their intuition, to find truth in their body and to contact their own way of moving.

Francisco Córdova, is director of the Physical Momentum company, director of ATLAS México Festival and director of the training program of Techniques of Movement (TDM) in Mexico and Barcelona. From 2006 he has been developing his methodology Body Action leading numerous workshops in companies, festivals and international arts centers in Europe, Asia and Latin America (DELTEBRE / SEAD / FONTYS / KIBBUTZ, etc.) He has earned various awards, residencies and artistic grants in Latin America, Asia and Europe and he is mentioned as one of the young precursors of new trends of the training of stage performance. Member of several companies and staging projects for 14 years, he has developed as performer, choreographer and teacher participating in meetings and festivals in more than 25 countries around the world.