IN PARI - Dance and Music #2

IN PARI is a series in which music weds different branches of art – in pairs, as equals, just as the series title suggests. This time – after five evenings devoted to the relationship between music and text, and four evenings focused on the connection between music and image – music and dance are intertwined in parity for the second time. The movements of pioneering dance artist Josef Nadj, one of the greats of contemporary dance who mainly works in France, are paired with the music of violinist Szilárd Mezei and cellist Albert Márkos. As is customary in the IN PARI series, the performers prepare for improvisation, responding to one another’s performances. The dramaturgy of the evening is shaped by this back-and-forth effect, and by the end of the production we are left with the impression that the genres stood in parity, rather than in a hierarchical or collateral relationship. The curator of the IN PARI series is Albert Márkos.

Josef Nadj (Nagy József) was born in Magyarkanizsa (today Kanjiža) in a Hungarian-speaking family. After pursuing fine arts studies at the predecessor of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, he moved to Paris, where he studied pantomime and became acquainted with tai chi, butoh and contemporary dance. As a dancer, he has appeared in productions by, among others, Sidonie Rochon, Mark Tompkins, Catherine Diverrès and François Verret.
As a choreographer, dancer, as well as visual artist and photographer, Josef Nadj approaches the human being with a poetic and passionate sensibility, while constantly searching for new forms of expression. The uniqueness of his artistic vision stems from a creative path deeply shaped by the upheavals and turning points of European history.
His pioneering, bold and innovative approach made him a key figure in contemporary dance as early as the 1980s. Since his 1987 work Canard Pékinois, considered a seminal piece, he has pursued choreographic work of consistently high artistic ambition and passion. Whether he is bringing to the stage the worlds of unconventional writers such as Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka or Henri Michaux, visual artists such as Miquel Barceló, or musicians like Akosh Szelevényi and Joëlle Léandre, Nadj always strives for complete creative freedom. In his works he combines various references, signs and materials in order to awaken our senses. Balancing on the border between reality and dream, tradition and modernity, he explores the most fundamental questions of human existence: our relationship to ourselves.
Josef Nadj is the author of more than thirty works, which have been presented in nearly fifty countries. He has been a guest at numerous major international events, including the Festival d’Avignon, the International Chekhov Festival and the Prague Quadrennial. Over the years, his works have become defining creations of contemporary dance.
From 1995 to 2016 he was the artistic director of the Centre Chorégraphique National d’Orléans, and in 2017 he founded his new company, Atelier 3+1, in Paris.
Alongside continuing his choreographic research, this new creative framework offers him the opportunity to once again place visual art at the centre of his stage and body-focused work. In recognition of his oeuvre, in 2002 the French state awarded him the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres), and in 2011 he was promoted to the rank of Officer.
Since 2021, Josef Nadj has once again placed dance at the centre of his creative activity: this was when he presented two major choreographic works, the performances OMMA and Full Moon.

Szilárd Mezei
Composer, violist, double bassist, improvising musician. Born in 1974 in Senta, Serbia (then Yugoslavia), a member of the Hungarian minority in the multiethnic region of Vojvodina. He studied violin in Senta and Subotica, and composition for four years at the Belgrade Music Academy in the class of Prof. Zoran Eric. With his ensembles he plays contemporary composed and improvised music, mostly his own compositions. As a composer, Mezei’s main field of interest is the relationship between improvisation and composition (similarly to Witold Lutosławski’s aleatory techniques and Anthony Braxton’s creative music methods),
also incorporating elements of jazz and authentic folk music. As a musician, he follows in the footsteps of Bartók and György Szabados. He is also an active theatre composer (including collaborations with Josef Nadj). More than 60 of his CDs and LPs have been released by international labels such as Leo Records, Not Two, Creative Sources, Aural Terrains, Red Toucan, Ayler Records, Slam Productions, No Business, FMR, AUT Records and Odradek Records. So far he has played with musicians / improvisers such as Matthias Schubert, Róbert Benkő, György Szabados, Tim Hodgkinson, Albert Márkos, Peter Ole Jörgensen, Jens Balder, Joe Fonda, Michael Jefry Stevens, Joëlle Léandre, Hamid Drake, Herb Robertson, Frank Gratkowski, Charles Gayle, Sten Sandell, Joel Grip, Nicola Guazzaloca... There exist more than 500 registered compositions of his for various line-ups. In addition, his work includes several symphonic pieces, chamber orchestra and chamber works, as well as concertos.
He is also active in theatre music (he has written music for more than 60 theatre plays), and has twice won Serbia’s most important theatre award, the “Sterija” Prize, along with numerous other awards for his theatre music. His writings on music have appeared in numerous journals in the former Yugoslavia and in Hungary.

Albert Márkos
Albert Márkos is a composer and cellist, one of the key figures of the Hungarian improvisational, contemporary, applied and experimental music scenes. Born in Cluj-Napoca, he is also recognized as a film composer and as the author of music for theatre productions. He is a member of numerous jazz and contemporary music formations and projects (Kassák, ARGO, budbudās, W.H. Shakespeare, Tractus, etc.), and the composer of countless contemporary music works. He is the editor of the IN PARI series.