Don't Leave the Room - Nadar Ensemble & Elena Evstratova

For the first time, Elena Evstratova is collaborating with a music ensemble: the experimental Nadar Ensemble, cultural ambassador of Sint-Niklaas. As a deaf actress, she becomes the rhythmic center of Don't Leave the Room, in which every gesture must coincide exactly with the music. The performance is based on a poem by Joseph Brodsky, written during the Hong Kong flu. It is a call for seclusion, which is simultaneously ironic, melancholic, and threatening. Voor Evstratova resonates with her youth in the Soviet Union, where silence became a necessity and the walls seemed to listen. “For me, Brodsky’s text feels like a prison – but also like a protection. It says: stay inside, be silent, do not speak. That is censorship, but also survival.” – Elena Evstratova “It is precision work: when the trombone plays a long note, I adjust my movement to it. My gestures must follow the music exactly.” – Elena Evstratova Het Nadar Ensemble stands for adventure, interdisciplinarity, and a critical view of the world today. In the spirit of the 19th-century Nadar, who brought different disciplines together, the ensemble explores the boundaries of music, film, performance, theater, and installation art with new technologies. The ensemble develops innovative concert forms, from living room concerts and walks to projects with cranes or hot air balloons, and thus wants to anchor new music in the world of today. Elena Evstratova is a deaf actress, born in Siberia and trained at the Conservatorium van Moskou. She worked internationally in theater, dance, and performance, and in Belgium, among others, with Silence Radio, where she created Portici and various dance performances. She specialized in expressive theater with facial expressions, gestures, dance, and comedy, and also taught theater to deaf children for years.