A Spiritual Conduit
Nacera Belaza reaches a new dimension through dance
By Alyssa Lapid
Nacera Belaza has performed all over the world, but she doesn’t seek the spotlight. Born in Algeria and raised in France, the dancer-choreographer aims to stimulate an audience’s imagination by sharing emotions and sensations rather than creating a consumable spectacle. “My goal is to find deep answers about the human condition: What does it mean to be free, what does it mean to be alive, to be reconciliated, unified,” she says. “Doing art for me is a kind of research on the human being.”
In her recent presentations at Danspace Project for the Crossing the Line Festival, Belaza twirled for long stretches of time — 20 minutes or more — with two other dancers. Sometimes they orbited each other, sometimes they took turns, and always they moved in dim light, at times barely perceptible.
The performances possess a ritualistic quality and during a post-show Q-and-A, one audience member likened the movement to that of whirling dervishes. But while granting spectators whatever associations they may have, Belaza rejected the idea that she was inspired by any religious practice (or even any particular dance technique). Yet her work seems to evoke the longstanding notion of dance as a conduit to a spiritual realm.
“I’m not interested in representation,” she says. “It’s about being empty and invisible.” For the last 30 years, Belaza has been working to fine-tune the process she practices and teaches — the removal of self. Physically, this means no frills, no costumes. Mentally, she refers to her approach as emptying and letting go: of ego (the human tendency toward vanity — the desire to look good in front of and for an audience), of fear (the anxiety of not being able to deliver), and of one’s own limiting beliefs (imagining the body’s physical limits in spinning, for instance). Her pre-show ritual of clearing the mind involves at least two hours of silence. “I stop talking,” she says. The process of letting go is so crucial to her practice that if her dancers can’t master the technique, she lets them go. “If you have a big ego this is a big problem.”
Her approach recalls the late American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009), who heavily influenced modern dance. Both seek to remove the author’s agency. Seth Williams, professor of dance at Barnard College, explains that Cunningham was “interested in the negation of self and removing the author from the process of creating.” Cunningham expresses these ideas in his essay, “The Function of a Technique for Dance,” published in Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. He writes, “The body as a channel to the source of energy becomes possible under the discipline the dancer sets for himself — the rigid limitations he works within, in order to arrive at freedom.”
Belaza, too, has always sought freedom through art. “Art is one of those spaces that gives you answers to your [human] condition,” she says. “At the beginning I was just obsessed by the fact that I wanted to be free. Being free — it’s not just moving your body. It’s not just going on stage. It’s deeper than that.” Belaza recalls Nina Simone, whose work she admires, talking about finding freedom in an unlikely place — on stage. “It’s not because you turn that you reach spiritual dimension,” Belaza says, referring to her own performance. “You have to do a certain work on yourself to reach this dimension where you just extend yourself, you feel that you are so big inside. Infinite. I’m naturally spiritual. The dimension of spirituality is a component of our being. We think we don’t need it [but] you can see in the audience’s reaction: they also need it. My motivation is to deliver this dimension.”
In the performance at Danspace it seemed like Belaza brought the audience into a meditative trance. It felt light. Peaceful.
Introducing the post-show discussion right after the performance ended, Danspace Project’s executive director Judy Hussie-Taylor said, “I don’t even want to talk.” It was as if she wanted to stay close to the experience for a few moments longer, to bask a little bit more in what had just transpired.
“She was right,” said Belaza later. “You don’t need to talk.”
