Nadezhda

a figural dance theatre piece about the loss of the own and hope

Nadezhda no longer exists.

Disappeared from the map, the place exists only as a memory.
A fragment, fallen out of time into the nowhere.
Uprooted creatures wandering in it,
traveling between farewell and an unknown destination.
In their luggage a few belongings,
the heirlooms of a lost life.
Clinging to them,
they carry them through withered fields and stormy tides.
The past as a source of strength and food for the way.
The sound of the cuckoo clock still in their ear,
the last dance with their fiancé in their body.
On the tongue, the taste of their favourite food
and a word of the old language.
Step by step, they wander through valleys of hope
and over mountains of fortune.
In their hearts confidence and courage grow
to start anew.

Nadezhda is there. Everywhere.

Based on family storytelling and the inheritance of trauma, Nadezhda deals with the loss of home and identity. From the perspective of a generation of grandchildren, the piece reconstructs the blind spots of our grandmothers in fragmented flashbacks.
However, the specific biographies only form the starting point for a much deeper, more symbolic examination of the history of migration and displacement and its effects up to the present.
At the heart of the choreographic research is the psychology of being a stranger, but also the hope of arriving in a foreign land, told through dance and with the means of figure and object theatre. An assemblage of masks, puppets, inherited artifacts and found props creates poetically surreal worlds of images that merge into an overall scenery and encourage the audience to question their own roots - or lack thereof.

It is a piece about the restlessness within us, about healing and repair and the search for what constitutes home.
After all, the desire to feel at home and a sense of belonging is nothing less than a universal, existential need.

Creation, dance, puppetry: Eva Baumann, Bar Gonen, Aurora Bonetti
Music, sound editing: Roderik Vanderstraeten
Research, objects, costumes: Katrin Wittig
Figure construction: Verena Waldmüller
Stage: Eva Baumann, Katrin Wittig
Lighting design, technique: Ingo Jooß
Coaching puppetry, Outside Eye: Julika Mayer
Artistic direction, research, choreography: Eva Baumann
PR: Nicola Steller
Layout, graphic design: HuM-collective

PREMIER
April 18th, 2024
further dates
April 19th, 2024
April 20th, 2024
April 21st, 2924

and
June 30th, 2024 in the frame of “Figure it out”

FITZ - Theatre of animated Forms Stuttgart

Nadezhda is a production of Cie. ZEIT/GEIST in co-production with FITZ - Theatre of animated Forms Stuttgart. Funded by the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart as part of a conceptual grant (2022-2024), the LBBW foundation, Ritter Sport and by the Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart gUG.
The research phase was funded by the flausen+ individual grant from Fonds Darstellende Künste as part of #TakeCare (2023) and by npn/Joint Adventures in the Stepping Out program for the conception of the trilogy ZEIT/GEIST (2021). Both programs were funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART Kultur. Dance aid program.
Nadezhda was also supported by Dance Limerick, Ireland as part of the Percolate Residency 2023. With kind support of Produktionszentrum Tanz und Performance Stuttgart and Uferstudios Berlin.