Nacera Belaza had never dared embrace circular rhythms because “the frames of reference and states they generate seemed so different [to her]”. Until, that is, she attended a pow-wow in the wilderness near Minneapolis, where different Dakota communities freely intermingle, chant and dance. The two fundamental elements of the circle and rhythm are connected and ritualised in her new creation, La Nuée, featuring ten dancers initiating an all-embracing hypnotic movement. Escaping from the shadows, they spin, interact and give in to their own impulses, to a soundtrack created by the choreographer herself combining clapping, Japanese percussion instruments, cries and remixed traditional chanting. It’s a “ceremony” that combines the trance-like states of Le Cercle and Sur le fil with the experience of wave-like elevation revealed in L’Onde, opening up a third way that involves the apparent dissolution of the bodies that appear as rapidly as they vanish, gravitating in repetitive motion until they free themselves from their terrestrial weight and experiencing dematerialisation as they melt into one another, forming a dizzying magma.
En coréalisation avec le CCN Ballet national de Marseille.
