Nadezhda
a figural dance theatre piece about the loss of the own and hope

FITZ – Theatre of animated Forms Stuttgart


Based on family storytelling and the inheritance of trauma, Nadezhda deals with the loss of home. From the perspective of a generation of granddaughters, the piece reconstructs the blind spots of our grandmothers in fragmentary flashbacks.
However, the specific biographies only form the starting point for a much deeper, more symbolic examination of the history of migration and displacement and its effects up to the present.
At the heart is the psychology of being a stranger, but also the hope of arriving in a foreign land, told through dance and with the means of figure and object theatre. An assemblage of masks, puppets, inherited artifacts and found props creates poetically surreal worlds of images that merge into an overall scenery and encourage the audience to question their own roots – or lack thereof.
It is a piece about the restlessness within us, about healing and repair and the search for what constitutes home. 
After all, the desire to feel at home and a sense of belonging is nothing less than a universal, existential need.

Creation, dance, puppetry: Eva Baumann, Bar Gonen, Aurora Bonetti
Music, sound editing: Roderik Vanderstraeten
Research, objects, costumes: Katrin Wittig
Figure construction: Verena Waldmüller
Stage: Eva Baumann, Katrin Wittig
Lighting design, technique: Ingo Jooß
Coaching puppetry, Outside Eye: Julika Mayer
Artistic direction, research, choreography: Eva Baumann

Nadezhda is a production of Cie. ZEIT/GEIST in co-production with FITZ – Theatre of animated Forms Stuttgart. Funded by the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart as part of a conceptual grant (2022-2024), the LBBW foundation, Ritter Sport and by the Freie Tanz- und Theaterszene Stuttgart gUG.

The research phase was funded by the flausen+ individual grant from Fonds Darstellende Künste as part of #TakeCare (2023) and by npn/Joint Adventures in the Stepping Out program for the conception of the trilogy ZEIT/GEIST (2021). Both programs were funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART Kultur. Dance aid program.

Nadezhda was also supported by Dance Limerick, Ireland as part of the Percolate Residency 2023. With kind support of Produktionszentrum Tanz und Performance Stuttgart and Uferstudios Berlin.

The revival 2026 is funded by the City of Stuttgart in the frame of “Kultur am Nachmittag” and by FITZ Theatre of animated forms Stuttgart.