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Nadj's Dance of the Absurd |
| Section: THE ARTS / DANCE |
| Author: Maya Wallach |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 9/1/1991 |
| Size: 1,373 Words, 8,078 Characters |
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Imagine Our Town set in turn-of-the-century Hungary instead of America. Josef Nadj's latest creation, Comedia Tempio reflects the same preoccupation with the unremitting pressure of everyday life as Thornton Wilder's play. But where Wilder exhorts Americans to learn to appreciate the beauty around them, Nadj considers life as a condition better treated with humor and a healthy sense of the absurd.
It is easy to see how he learned the need for laughter. Nadj was born in 1958 in a Hungarian village situated--thanks to the vagaries of political borders--in Yugoslavia. Instead of bearing his family name, Jozsef Nagy, his passport and official papers bear the Serbian translation: Josef Nadj.
"Moving" to his "native country"--already the ironic quotation marks are impossible to avoid...
. . .
... were suspended in ropes? If you were stuck in a box? What is the most logical way to approach an illogical situation? What do you do if your hometown is not in your native country?
As Nadj's dances demonstrate so well, these puzzles are insoluble. Life is innately absurd: The more one tries to take it seriously, the more ridiculous it becomes. As Nadj says, "Comedy is the only answer."
(812 of 8,078 characters)
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