Jose Navas

Jose Navas has up to now been known as the wunderkind of the solo genre. Photo © Andras Mohos.

Perfume de Gardenias: Imagining the End

(Budapest) Amidst moments of sharp intense dance, nudity and images of violence and pain, a lone voice speaks calmly and crisply. “I am alone but watching… This is the end of the end, and you don’t even know it. Just a deformed old man like you could be so calm…”

It is the voice of Venezuelan-born dancer-choreographer Jose Navas whose narration trembles peacefully during a pre-show run-through of his newest choreography Perfume de Gardenias. The show, by Navas’ Compagnie Flak will be presented in World Premiere to Budapest audiences for a two day run at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, starting this evening. With this work, that is sure to travel the stages of the world, Navas presents a very personal, complex and refined piece that will prove to be an important turning point in the career of this inventive and provocative artist.

Navas left his native Venezuela in 1988 for New York City only to settle three years later in the dance Mecca of Montreal. He has worked with some of the most celebrated contemporary dance companies and choreographers including Billy T. Jones, the Merce Cunningham Studio, Lucinda Childs and notably William Douglas before himself dazzling audiences throughout the world with his own choreographies that are masterfully pure, riveting and a mesmerizing display of physical dance.

He has up to now been known as the wunderkind of the solo genre. These works leave you simply breathless and wondering how close he had come to the limits of human physicality. Even Navas’ group choreographies to date resemble collaborations between fellow dance virtuosos than complex, structured, standalone works. This will be no more after the premiere of Perfume de Gardenias, a work that transcends the physical world, and is a true group choreography as complex as it is moving- and at times even troubling.

Perfume de Gardenias is an expressive collage of solo’s, duo’s and group sketches that allude to relationships, emotions and experiences. The dancers perform to the meticulously rendered musical or vocal works of an international array of four independent collaborators Pierre Berthet, Joao de Bruco, Laurent Masle and Bob Ostertag. These works are not Bach or even Beethoven. They are rough edged works alluding to notions of violence, despair and even abuse- ever present characteristics of today’s society yet not always associated with dance.

This new work is also chalked with stark contrasts of energy and atmosphere. The sharp, staccato and intense movements of sheer dance as performer Catherine Jodoin bolts emphatically to and fro in contrast to moments of stillness and calmness as she disrobes and exposes without ceremony the bare essence that has the power to fuel desire- the body.

The stage where the five dancers perform is separated from the backdrop of a garden of the once-blooming, fragrant flower of romance: the gardenia. From the distance, however, we hear tortured sounds of pain and grief- emotions that strangely but necessarily co-exist in this garden of beauty, joy and desire.

Ever present in Perfume de Gardenias is the premise of loss and death stemming notably from the memory of Jose Navas’ lover and longtime creative collaborator, the noted choreographer William Douglas. Douglas fell victim to AIDS in 1996. During the period before his death, Navas and a small group of dancers continued their collaboration at a frantic pace, all knowing that the end was near.

Navas shared the prestigious Bessie Award with William Douglas (New York Dance and Performance Award) for ‘While Waiting’, a solo choreographed by Douglas shortly before his death.

“Four years after his death,” said Navas, speaking of how coming to grips with the death of Douglas colored his new choreography, “I feel like now as a person I am ready for a work like this piece. There is a different understanding, a responsibility that I can now assume to talk about desire, death or life in a different way than I was doing in my solos.”