Performance | On Stage
Nacera Belaza, La Nuée
La Nuée, Oct 2024
Photo © Laurent Philippe
In La Nuée, Algerian-born, Paris-based choreographer Nacera Belaza shares a meditation on collective ritual, communion, and ecstatic repetition. Creating a ritual in which circularity, stamina, and shared presence form the basis of community, a cast of seven dancers move in rhythmic and hypnotic waves to create a shifting tableaux in near complete darkness. Like a charcoal drawing, the work unfolds with bodies appearing and dissolving in precise bursts of light. With an immersive sound design, the dance bridges ancestral rhythms and contemporary movement, drawing attention to the invisible threads that bind communal bodies across time, space, and culture.
POST-SHOW TALK
Sun, Mar 1
Hear from the artists after the performance in this conversation moderated by Dr. Thomas F. Defrantz.
Credits
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Choreography, sound, and light design | Nacera Belaza
Performers | Paulin Banc, Aurélie Berland, Viivi Forsman, Bastien Gash, Magdalena Hylak, Aimée Lagrange, Pierre Morillon
Stage manager | Christophe Renaud
Sound | Marco Parenti
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Nacera Belaza was born near Médéa in Algeria and has lived in France since the age of five. After studying modern literature, she founded her own company in 1989. She is a self-taught dancer, driven by the vital need to express herself, to express and unravel the complexity of a dual cultural background. It was during childhood and adolescence, in secret, that her language emerged spontaneously, drawing material first from herself and then from literature. Since then, her work has explored movement in a serene, profound, and continuous breath, confronting patience, rigor, and simplicity with the “the overwhelming noise of our existence” restoring to gesture its existential utility. Her work, recognized and acclaimed by the French Ministry of Culture, earned her the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015, and Officier in 2024. In 2008, Le Cri was awarded the Prix de la Révélation by the Syndicat de la Critique. In 2017, SACD also honored her career with the Prix Chorégraphe. Her work is regularly presented in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. She has set up a cooperative in Algeria, enabling her to work regularly with the country of her origins.
Thomas F. DeFrantz, Professor at Northwestern University, directs SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology, a humanities and creative research lab. DeFrantz believes in our shared capacity to do better and engage creative spirit for a collective good that is anti-racist, proto-feminist, and queer affirming. DeFrantz convenes the Black Performance Theory working group and is founding director of the Collegium for African Diaspora Dance. Their faculty and teaching credits include at the University of the Arts Mobile MFA in Dance; ImPulsTanz; SNDO; Juilliard; New Waves Institute; P.A.R.T.S.; Movement Research; Bennington College; faculty at Hampshire College, Stanford, Yale, MIT, NYU, Duke, the University of Nice. DeFrantz contributed concept and a voice-over for a permanent installation on Black Social Dance that opened with the Smithsonian Museum of African American Life and Culture in 2016. Their current creative project is …i feel lonely….
On Stage
Each spring the MCA presents a suite of performances that reflect our contemporary moment.
Project Support
Nacera Belaza’s La Nuée is on tour with the support of Villa Albertine.
Association Jazz Ame – Compagnie Nacera Belaza is presented with the support Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Co-production.
Festival d’Automne à Paris; MC93-Bobigny; Chaillot – Théâtre National de la Danse; Kunstenfestivaldesarts; Charleroi Danse; Maison de la danse, Lyon – Pôle Européen de Création; Villa Albertine – Ambassade de France aux États-Unis; Compagnie DCA / La Chaufferie. With the suuport of La Danse en grande forme (le Cndc- Angers, le CCN-Malandain Ballet Biarritz, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux · La Rochelle, le CCN de Caen en Normandie, Boom’Structur, la Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand, le Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble, la MC2 : Maison de la Culture de Grenoble, Le Phare-CCN du Havre Normandie, le CCN – Ballet national de Marseille, le CCN d’Orléans, Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France, La Place de La Danse – CDCN Toulouse / Occitanie, La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne); with the support of l’ACCN et de l’A-CDCN.
The company is supported by the DRAC – Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de- France – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication as a conventioned company and by the Région Ile-de-France as a permanent artistic and cultural company.
Funding
Lead support for the 2025–26 season of MCA Performance is provided by Elizabeth A. Liebman.
Generous support is provided by Anne L. Kaplan; and Carol Prins and John Hart/The Jessica Fund.
The MCA is a proud member of the Museums in the Park and receives major support from the Chicago Park District.
