Digital program book ‘The play between’

Dear audience,

Welcome to The play between, our first NDT 2 program of the season that presents world premieres by two exciting new voices to the company.

For his work Bedtime story, Nadav Zelner invites us into a world of fantasy that plays on the edges of the imagination. Through its fresh, mesmerizing, and lightning fast vocabulary, Bedtime story is a riveting embodiment of the dreamer searching within us all.

Folkå by Marcos Morau is an evocative journey that celebrates life and the ritual of transformation. This compelling work is a collective force that moves us into a mythic passage through the human psyche.

I am very grateful to Nadav and Marcos for their inspired works and the generous artistic explorations they offered. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge our collaborators and team at NDT for their incredible care and passionate effort that helped realize this program.

Thank you for joining us tonight! It is a pleasure to have you with us.

Emily Molnar
Artistic Director

“The small, secret moment between sleep and consciousness is the moment in which I make my dreams come true.

Recently, I return to the dreams I once had.

As a kid, I used to dream about snakes. Every morning I was surprised that I remembered them in great detail, though I did not understand why these snakes visited me in my dreams.

Even though I am afraid of snakes, every time we met in a dream they did not threaten me, I was never afraid.

Today I understand that these snakes are me facing the world and facing myself.  I am confronting my fears and following my beliefs.

Instead of running away from memory, I decided to explore it and chose to use it as an element on the dancers’ pajamas.

Music lies at the beginning of every work I create. Given the fact that I have Tunisian roots, the choice of Northern-African music was natural.

When I hear it, I feel like I am in a dream full of freedom and hope.

In this work it was important for me to give my dreams a stage, and to give the dreaming child that I once was a tangible expression.

As we get older, we tend to abandon our dreams.

We should get reacquainted with the child in us. The one who is not afraid to fall, the one who experiences life and is intrigued to discover. The one who knows that all dreams can come true.

The child in us holds the power to laugh, to get excited, and to fulfill all that its desire.”
– Nadav Zelner

Read Nadav Zelner’s biography

“The frenetic pace of contemporary life elicits us to stop for a moment and collect the legacy of time. Human beings, from their solitude, face the awareness of their finitude and the drama of not finding their definitive place in this world. This difficulty is in turn the gift that allows us to express ourselves and transmit our concerns from one generation to the next.

The person who leaves the cave versus the person who leaves their apartment in the 21st century is the same person that builds fictions where they do not find the answers that calm their spirit, asking themselves the same questions about life and death generation after generation. All fictions, from primitive rites to their manifestation in updated images, are developed in communion with the group.

Folklore is the expression of the customs and traditions of the peoples, it is the celebration of life and the honor of death through music, dance, symbols, legends or superstitions.

Folkå acts as a ceremony of our time that looks to the past to remind us that we continue to celebrate life, through mystical rites, here bathed in the fury of contemporaneity, where we continue to be part of an endless cycle.

Folkå is a song to life, a night of offering and celebration.”
– Marcos Morau

Read Marcos Morau’s biography