Between dance and drawing Nadj chooses both

Chance of programming, the choreographer Josef Nadj found in Avignon Miquel Barcelo, the plastic surgeon, but remote. These two - is offered in 2006 the Festival a memorable performance, "Paso Doble", which was tethered in clay cherished by the Spanish artist to no longer make one with this matter. This summer, Barcelo is in town to the Lambert Collection or on the forecourt of the Palace of the Popes with a monumental sculpture, an elephant taking on its proboscis. Nadj, it occupies a more modest for a singular proposition, "The Ravens" place, where he shared the poster with the multi-instrumentalist and faithful of his creations, Akosh s. Josef Nadj has this bartered time the warm colour of the clay for deep black, as a rare ink. Between dance and drawing, Nadj chooses both. He made also his body an instrument of painter to splashed white pages; the end of the blackened nose, he also scribbles. "Intermission", beautiful Quartet dated 2008 already eminently plastic, he presents his book on the craft, him who studied at the school of fine arts in Novi Sad Vojvodina and then the history of art in Budapest.

"The Ravens" opens on the interpreter in China's shadow, a canvas marching under his fingers. The calligraphy he imagines this time intriguing. One could almost get lost in the jumble of lines. Josef Nadj then left the darkness for the front of the shelf: several times it is back, while the Hyperacute saxophone from his partner spin the atmosphere - and somewhat our ears. It is this Raven repeatedly observed on his native land. In black suit, as always, Nadj deploys, almost crowded arms - or the wings of a night. It is and remains this prodigious dancer that blends grace and strength. A double suspended Cone, he choir of dust in a beam of light.

This performance, worked initially from improvisations, moult before our eyes in a strange and pervasive ceremony. The Viewer to remain concentrated if he does not want to lose the thread. We'll see Josef Nadj whipping a umpteenth tense page with short branches, attach two feathers at the ankles as a volatile which gives speeds of Angel. All of these details are millimétrés: perhaps a little too much elsewhere.

The tension mounts again a notch when the dancer slips while dressed in a jar of respectable size. As a bath of painting - in fact the gouache - which it is coated, almost inhuman in its forthcoming. "Marble" living if he, the man running rolls a last time on the ground. The carpet was removed, a spreadsheet appears instead. Josef Nadj fades, leaving blackened traces of his passage. We guess that he breathes with difficulty the face thus cover of gouache, his action is hesitant. The Raven of the title is more that a being the penalty. The room holds its breath. To salutes, Akosh s, Josef Nadj will opt for microphones movements. He can visibly longer. "The Ravens", living table is a sketch or a Web master Mystery. But in the personal path of choreographer performer installed at Orléans, to imagine that this show is a place apart.