Nach / Anne-Marie Van

Anne-Marie Van is a krump and contemporary dance performer and choreographer. As Nach, her stage name, she forges herself as a krump dancer through encounters with other practitioners, including Heddy Maalem, Bintou Dembélé and Marcel Bozonnet, among others. She is currently writing her first solo piece, Cellule, inspired by Takahiko Iimura’s short film ai / love. She approaches it as an autobiographical account of her experiences of and reactions to desire, sensuality, the monstruous and the indomitable.

Nach’s reading of Junichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows alerted her to what she saw as similarities between Japanese aesthetics of light and dark, and krumping in France: “Where there is nothing, we bring shadow and thus create beauty.” She used her observations and experience of Japanese cultural rituals during her residency to inform her choreography and artistic practice. Her project built on contacts with pluridisciplinary artists, at the same time seeking inspiration in Noh and Kabuki theatre, urban and alternative cultures, and Butoh. Nach questions women’s place in krump and in Japanese cultural practices, strongly directing her project towards themes of eroticism, desire and self-confidence. Her aim is for this series of encounters and discoveries to develop into a video work.