Back

Navy Blue
Oona Doherty

Staatstheater Darmstadt – Großes Haus Backstage 

Sun. 12.11. I 4 pm

 

Duration: 60 Minuten
Language: In English Language
Tickets: 25 €/ reduced 12 €

Dressed entirely in blue: 12 dancers wearing jackets and trousers made of stiff denim, the trademark of the class divide. They burst into the room. They dance and dance and keep on dancing. Like an algorithm on a permanent loop. On and on, no matter what happens.

Navy Blue is Oona Doherty’s first work for a large stage. It is both an unsettling choreography and a highly personal reflection on dance and the existential fears of the present. Set to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, in which he processes his experiences of depression and overcoming the disease, Doherty transposes the classic ideal of crisis and redemption into the present day. 

Doherty’s style is raw and angry. The dancers push their bodies to the limits of physical pain – during the movements their bodies almost seem to burst apart. At the same time the piece takes a sensitive and tender approach to the circumstances of our time, searching for collective healding and asking whether such a thing might still be possible. 

Doherty: “‘Navy Blue’ came out of my attempt to make something creative out of my loneliness and depression. I felt overwhelmed and in an existential state of anxiety through overwork, lockdown and all the crises in the world. The only way to free myself from this situation was to make something out of it.”

Artistic Direction: Oona Doherty 
Choreography: Oona Doherty with the collaboration of the Dancers
Music: Jamie xx & Sergueï Rachmaninov 
Music Collaborator: Jamie xx © by Universal Music Publishing Ltd.
Music Production: William Smith with additional music: Sergueï Rachmaninov
Writer Collaborator: Bush Moukarzel
Video Conception: Nadir Bouassria
Lighting Design & Technical Director: John Gunning
Stage Manager: Lisa Marie Barry
Costumes Conception: Oona Doherty & Lisa Marie Barry
Management & Production: Gabrielle Veyssiere
Production, Administration: Jenny Suarez & Virginie Reymond
Dancers: Amancio Gonzalez Miñon, Andréa Moufounda, Arno Brys, Kinda Gozo, Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold, Joseph Simon, Mathilde Roussin, Kevin Coquelard, Sati Veyrunes, Thibaut Eiferman, Tomer Pistiner, Zoé Lecorgne, Magdalena Öttl

Navy Blue is a creation of Oona Doherty, produced by OD Works, coproduced by Kampnagel International Summer Festival, Sadler’s Wells, Théâtre National de Chaillot, La Biennale di Venezia, Maison de la Danse, The Shed, Belfast International Arts Festival and Big Pulse Dance Alliance – coproduced by Dance Umbrella, Dublin Dance Festival, Torinodanza Festival and Julidans  – and presented by Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Zodiak – Side Step Festival, ONE Dance Week, International Dance Festival TANEC PRAHA, New BalticDance, CODA Oslo International Dance Festival, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union and the support of the Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles d’Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture.

Photo: D. Matvejevas, Ghislain Mirat, Sinje Hasheider, Dajana Lothert