“He’s present in an unobtrusive way. He simply is. Everything about him is larger than life!”, says Dorothée Munyaneza of Christian Nka, whom she draws into an unexpected—and choreographic—adventure. The boxer, educator and poet finds himself propelled onto the stage in a long dance poem alongside the Chicago-based composer, musician and performer Ben LaMar Gay, a long-time collaborator of the choreographer.
Together, through their physical presence and their voices, they create an unprecedented dialogue of music, images and words; they reveal the memory of the body and create a space for unfolding and for life. Version(s) is above all a nuanced and deeply sensitive portrait of a man of mixed heritage grappling with profound questions of masculinity, fatherhood, discrimination and the role of violence. With a choreographic language inspired by boxing, the performance emerges as “a living, vibrant and profoundly poetic archive of Christian Nka.”
