Josef Nadj . Centre Chorégraphique National d'Orleans

Are you a lover of poetry, Japanese martial arts and metamorphosis? If so, you will find this symbiosis in Asobu, the latest creation by the French-Hungarian choreographer Josef Nadj. Asobu is Japanese for 'to play' and refers to a fantastic artistic challenge. French and Hungarian dancers come together in a large-scale production and act the part of characters with a strange humoristic aura. Asobu is Nadj's tribute to forms of visual theatre from East and West. His movement theatre is based on the world of illusion, ranging from shadow theatre to the magic of fable. Men wearing Homburg hats and black suits perform an absurd ceremony in a search for God only knows what. It is as if you are watching a silent movie in which tragedy and the burlesque go hand in hand. We recognise Josef Nadj's filmic eye, which was trained at the art academy in Budapest. In Paris he made a special study of mime and dance, 'When I discovered that a person on stage creates a paradox, a mystery that cannot be ignored, I felt permanently drawn to this space.'