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Inspiration and obsession

Mamacallas dance troupe takes to the streets
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By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
April 18th, 2007 issue

Photo by Dragan Dragin
In their new work "Extraction," the dancers re-create the process of self-discovery.
Choreographer Pierre Nadaud wants to take back dancing in the street from the likes of Motown and Fame. He calls it the “theater of physical events,” and thinks warmer springtime weather is just the occasion to carry it out. “It’s my new obsession,” he says.
Festival Mamacallas

When: April 25–28
Where: Roxy NoD
Tickets: 80–120 Kč, available at the venue

Nadaud and his dance troupe Mamacallas plan to stage some outdoor performances this week. And for those who prefer a more traditional venue, Mamacallas will follow that with its first festival, a four-day conglomeration of past favorites and recent premieres at Roxy NoD. It will culminate on the last night with a performance of Extraction, which premiered at Divadlo Ponec in February, followed by an after-party.
Nadaud founded Mamacallas in 2004, only a few years into his own modern dance career, which he started when he was 28. Prior to that, he completed a philosophy degree in Paris. His thesis was entitled “Tiredness and Exhaustion,” two things viewers of his energetic dance pieces might guess he knows nothing about.
Nadaud began choreographing his own works in 2002, performing them independently before the creation of Mamacallas. He often credits artists in other genres as sources for his choreographic inspiration, which have included the paintings of Francis Bacon and writings of Lewis Carroll and Franz Kafka. Extraction is no exception, as Nadaud says it germinated from his musings on the novel More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon.
What struck Nadaud most in this 1953 science-fiction tale, he says, was how children living outside of everyday society care for each other, knowing each other and themselves beyond traditional roles and teachings. Extraction presents the development of the human body as an organism in relation to others around it. The piece begins with two women (Zdenka Svíteková and Lenka Vokurková) and one man (Nadaud) on the floor. Over the course of the one-hour performance, they grow and mature in movement, forming relationships with the other bodies they encounter on stage. The audience is acknowledged by the performers only at the end.
“Extraction for me is something like a machine,” Nadaud explains. “It’s a kind of physical process starting, and the audience goes with us on the trip.” Bodies are pure potential, he believes, but people don’t know what to do with them. “Extraction comes very close to discovering what is in your body, and discovering that the body is the first environment you have.”
This new work broke from Mamacallas tradition in terms of choreography, as Nadaud collaborated with Svíteková and Vokurková. “I bring the inspiration, the obsession, the proposition,” to begin the process, he says. But with Extraction it started to be real teamwork, which included the musical group Skupina C. Nadaud had worked with Skupina C on previous dance compositions, and this time included the group from the piece’s inception to fully integrate dance and sound.
One element of Nadaud and Skupina C’s vision for Extraction was the use of a motion-tracking system. It works, band member Jan Dufek explains, by having a video camera record the performance and send the images to a computer that converts the motion to numbers. The numerical data is processed by musical equipment into sound in near-real time, eliminating the lag inherent in live musicians watching and reacting to a performance.
“The motion-tracking system was really supposed to be the core part of Extraction,” Dufek says. But, due to technical problems, it ended up becoming just a complement to the musicians still playing live.
Both Dufek and Nadaud, however, are planning a new work that will utilize the motion-tracking system throughout, creating an onstage harmony of dance and sound. So, after the last celebratory drink is polished off at NoD, the troupe will go back to work, plotting its next creation of modern dance.
Oh, and don’t forget to look around you in the streets this week — they just might be rehearsing outdoors.

Brooke Edge can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (18/04/2007):

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