S

After captivating CODA audiences with Anatomies in 2007, José Navas here returns with his new piece S – a stunning meditation in movement inspired by Erik Satie’s immortal music Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. Eight dancers, stunning in their presence and vulnerability, present a choreography with the precision of calligraphy and structured like a musical score to Satie’s ethereal melodies, performed live by the acclaimed French pianist Claire Chevallier. An abstract and organic work. An encounter with grace.

José Navas was born in Venezuela and began his dance training in Caracas, continued it in New York at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio. During that period, he collaborated with Stephen Petronio, Michael Clark, Lucinda Childs and various independent choreographers. Among them, William Douglas created for him While Waiting, a magnificent solo that garnered them a prestigious Bessie Award. Together the they left New 
York for Montreal where Navas has been based since 1991. The creator of nearly two dozen works as an independent choreographer or as the artistic director of Compagnie Flak, he now focuses his artistic research on the essence and purity in movement. Abstraction, sobriety, intensity and depth are the words that best characterize his current work.