| Perfume de Gardenias
Jose Navas: Imagining the End
World Premiere Performance!
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 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 (New York Dance and
Performance Award) with William Douglas 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.”
05.16
Andrew Princz
Photos by Andras Mohos
This story first appeared on 16 May, 2000 in Hungary's leading daily Nepszabadsag.
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