Navy Blue
choreography: Oona Doherty in collaboration with the dancers
music: Jamie xx, Sergueï Rachmaninov
music collaborator: Jamie xx © by Universal Music Publishing Ltd
music production: William Smith
writer collaborator: Bush Moukarzel
video conception: Nadir Bouassria
lighting design, technical direction: John Gunning
stage manager: Lisa Marie Barry
costumes: Oona Doherty, Lisa Marie Barry
management, production: Gabrielle Veyssiere
production, administration: Jenny Suarez, Virginie Reymond
duration: 50’
premiere: Kampnagel International Summerfestival, Hamburg, 2022.
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 and Magdalena Öttl
Creation of Oona Doherty, produced by OD Works, coproduced by Kampnagel International Summer Festival (DE), Sadler’s Wells (UK), Théâtre National de Chaillot (FR), La Biennale di Venezia (IT), Maison de la Danse (FR), The Shed (USA), Belfast International Arts Festival (UK) and Big Pulse Dance Alliance, coproduced by Dance Umbrella (UK), Dublin Dance Festival (IR), Torinodanza Festival (IT) and Julidans (NL) ) and presented by Tanz im August/HAU Hebbel am Ufer (DE), Zodiak - Side Step Festival (FI), ONE Dance Week (BG), International Dance Festival TANEC PRAHA (CZ), New BalticDance (LT), CODA Oslo International Dance Festival (NW), funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, Supported by Kulturstiftug des Bundes and the support of the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France – Ministère de la culture
Twelve dancers in blue uniforms cascade through space. From the death of form and order into a re-birth. The work plays out in two distinct parts. Part one “the oppression”, the machine, dancing, dancing, dancing. Like an algorithm on loop, nonsense. The capitalist never-ending wave. To provide production after production after production. Keep going no matter what. The work. This is an ugly place, where a deep night navy blue descends. Part two... Hope out of the wounds of violence and capitalist machines. We go back into the Galactic black of deep space. The first light, the first sound. The first people on earth. Is this a reset? Is this the future? Is it now? What have we done? Fading into the darkness back into atoms and energy, like the shooting start we once were and will become again.
Oona Doherty was born in 1986 in London. She moved to Belfast when she was 10. She studied at St Louise’s comprehensive college in Belfast, The London School of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London. She has been performing dance-theatre internationally since 2010 with various companies, including: TRASH (NL), Abattoir Fermé (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin/United Fall (ROI), Enda Walsh & Landmark Productions (ROI). She creates her first solo work in 2016, awarded the “Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival Best Performer Award” and the “Total Theatre Dance Award” at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017 and the Audience prize at Reconnaissance in Grenoble in 2017. Her first group piece “Hard to be Soft” made in 2017, was voted “No.1 UK dance show” by the Guardian. In 2019, she created “Lady Magma: The Birth of a Cult”; a piece for 1 actress and 5 dancers, that was presented in 2022 at the Avignon Festival. In 2022, she premiered “Navy Blue”. Doherty’s distinctive and visceral choreography has sparked international attention, earning multiple awards, amazing reviews and prestigious artistic opportunities both in Ireland, Europe and worldwide. She creates intense, compelling works that appeal for societal change. She has forged a wide range of artistic relationships locally and internationally, such as Jamie xx, (La)Horde, Luca Truffarelli, John Scott, Girl Band… She has been awarded with the Venice Biennale Silver Lion in 2021. She was one of the Aerowaves 2017 selected artists, a Prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist and The MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist in 2016/17, an Associate Artist at Maison de la Danse de Lyon in 2017/18, an Associate Artist at La Briqueterie Vitry-sur-Seine from 2017-2019. She is Dublin Dance Festival Artist in Residence in 2020-2022 and a Big Pulse Dance Alliance Artist 2021/23.
Imbuing the balletic grace of her dancer’s movements with tension and anxiety, Doherty asks a refreshing yet unsettling question: what’s the point of dance?
© The Guardian
It's a properly brilliant piece. It feels new. Not overly relying on the past or having an obvious agenda concerning the future. It feels in, and deals with the present. Rare! …She uses bodies in space in a similar way to Balanchine – seams like the opening section from “Serenade”. Movement through space-borne from intention, architectural awareness, and collective energy.
© Gramilano
