Nacera Belaza La Nuée

From her dance beginnings as an autodidact, when she came to grips with the pursuit of freedom and identity between her Algerian and French roots, Nacera Belaza has always been a maverick of a kind. Refusing to conform to a precise aesthetic from her first piece Le Cri (2008) – putting dancers and audiences’ imaginations before anything else – she made darkness and repetition two of the pillars of her aesthetic world, which she has honed from piece to piece. Her quest for the “unexpected void that fulfills all our expectations” has been shown in the most prestigious venues and festivals in France and around the world. After featuring several pieces of hers, Chaillot presents La Nuée. The artist draws from a personal experience as an audience at the Mendota Pow Wow near Minneapolis. 
In this celebration performed by indigenous communities, Nacera Belaza identified two core elements of her language: the circle and rhythm. She watched their interaction, which she herself had always refrained from staging because the “representations and the states they trigger” seemed different to her. It is exactly this interaction that the 10 dancers – plus one unknown dancer, a disruption that will be different from city to city – will engage in. Without losing its asceticism or momentum, the group will have to embrace the newcomer, make them one of their own.

Anaïs Heluin 
 

Septembre 2022, en résidence aux Etats-Unis, j’assiste au Pow Wow de Mendota, non loin de Minneapolis. Plusieurs heures durant, des hommes et des femmes, issus de différentes communautés autochtones du Dakota, jeunes, vieux, enfants, se joignent au cercle ou en sortent librement, chacun apportant sa danse, son histoire. Autant de vies, de lignages et de corps singuliers, de rythmes creusant la terre et l’histoire, en quête de ce qui pourrait constituer un sens commun, un noyau, un chœur, un lien essentiel.

Et soudain, sous mes yeux, se répondaient naturellement deux éléments fondamentaux de mon travail que je n’avais jamais osé confronter, le cercle et le rythme, tant les imaginaires et les états qu’ils génèrent me semblaient différents. D’un côté, la force du cercle dans l’espace, traçant sa propre orbite autour d’un centre immuable et donnant l’impression d’organiser le désordre de vies disparates, de l’autre, le rythme creusant le temps en soulevant les corps pour leur accorder une fulgurante liberté…

"Je m'imprègne de choses et je verrai après ce que ça diffuse ou non dans mon travail."  Nacera Belaza / Affaires à suivre, Entretien avec Arnaud Laporte sur France Culture

Created in 1989, the Compagnie Nacera Belaza presents its pieces internationally with a regular presence in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. In France, she has been invited to prestigious festivals such as the Montpellier Dance Festival (2003, 2006, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2022), the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (2008, 2010), the Avignon Festival (2009, 2012), the Lyon Dance Biennial (2010, 2014) and the Marseille Festival (2017, 2018, 2020).

Nacera Belaza choreographs an inner journey, space, the emptiness within, areas of light and shadow, vertigo, repetition. She makes dance an introspective vertical dive. Her pieces explore movement in a serene, deep and continuous breath, confronting patience, rigour and simplicity with the “deafening din of our existences”, giving back to gesture its existential utility.
 

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