ARCHIVES 2012 / Atem

Transforming the cramped area of a three-by-four-meter box into an infinite space, abolishing time with a simple baton, which restricts as much as it makes possible the relationship of two beings: this is the theatrical and alchemical experience that Josef Nadj and Anne-Sophie Lancelin engage in. Together, they inhabit this device and dance for about 60 spectators. The crowding is metamorphosed into intimacy, the public is attentive to the innumerable details of a stage lit only by candles. The picture vacillates and changes attacked by each person's breath. Breath is Atem in German. It is a word that Josef Nadj encountered in a poem by Paul Celan, whose writings gravitate around this new creation. The picture also vacillates and changes attacked by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) whose engraving Melencolia has subjugated and pursued Albert Nadj since his adolescence. He sees a woman and a small man in it, both sporting wings, who seem to be waiting in front of a house, surrounded by a host of signs and objects that lend themselves to infinite interpretations. The choreography takes hold of this engraving and the other two that form with it a trilogy – Saint Jerome in His Study and Knight, Death and the Devil –, like a field of rebuses, of suggestions. To unfold all the possibilities in these works, Anne-Sophie Lancelin and Josef Nadj circulate in a sound space composed by Alain Mahé, using the sound of nature and the elements. For a small theatre of light and shadow, emotions and sensations. RB