Oona Doherty (IR) / OD WORKS
Navy Blue
Navy blue quest for a greater good.
With raw dance about pressing issues, choreographer Oona Doherty has stolen the hearts of dance audiences. In Navy Blue, twelve dancers dressed in navy blue uniforms search for a balance between individual insignificance and collective power. Are we, as puny dots in an immense universe, capable of substantial change?
Julidans
Main programme
run time 60 minutes
location Internationaal Theater Amsterdam
venue Grote Zaal
After talk with Oona Doherty 10 July
The performance contains a spoken text that can be viewed here
In Navy Blue, the inky blue night descends on a group of twelve dancers of different ages and from different backgrounds. They are dressed in identical navy blue work overalls – or are they prison uniforms? Like a classical corps de ballet, they dance to Rachmaninov's insidiously romantic second piano concerto, trapped within a destructive algorithm. Does the source of liberation lie in this relentless disruption of the status quo? -|- Based on her ambivalent relationship with ballet, the hierarchical dance style she admires for its form and athletic ability on the one hand, and describes as "a theatrical symbol of oppression" on the other, Doherty goes in search of dance that serves as a catalyst for social change in a world fraught with exploitation. Doherty: "Navy Blue is about how we stand as tiny dots on our blue dot and fight each other to control a fraction of that damn dot."
OONA DOHERTY
Oona Doherty is considered an exciting representative from the European dance scene. In 2021, she was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Dance Biennale. Marked by the civil war in Northern Ireland, where she spent her childhood, Doherty develops a dance language steeped in pain, rebellion, and hope. Fierce and defiant, Doherty and her dancers seek a greater common good, perhaps even something like redemption.
CREDITS
choreography, artistic direction Oona Doherty, with the collaboration of the dancers
music collaboration Jamie xx and Sergueï Rachmaninov
music collaborator Jamie xx © by Universal Music Publishing Ltd
music production William Smith
with additional music Sergueï Rachmaninov
writer collaborator Bush Moukarzel
video conception Nadir Bouassria
projection Nadir Bouasria
costume Oona Doherty, Lisa Marie Barry
stage manager Lisa Marie Barry -|-
lighting design and technical director John Gunning
rehearsal direction Jade Adamson
dance & choreography Amancio Gonzalez Miñon, Andréa Moufounda, Arno Brys,Louise Gourvelec, Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold, Joseph Simon, Mathilde Roussin, Ryan O'neill, Sati Veyrunes, Thibaut Eiferman, Tomer Pistiner, Zoé Lecorgne And Magdalena Öttl
management and production Gabrielle Veyssiere
administration and production Jenny Suarez, Virginie Reymond
text Oona Doherty, Bush Moukarzel