Le Radeau

Rot Hat is a historical fiction, a speculative ceremony to enter the dark forest. With humour and disarming vulnerability, Nate Yaffe taps into the subtle logic of his neurodivergent body to ‘remember’ long lost story fragments, songs, and dances with rotting logs and fruit. He follows their lead, de-composing his body and composting cultural artefacts into new fertile ground. With his hurdy-gurdy, Ben Grossman joins Nate in this quest, and together they reinscribe the ancient bond that joins musician and dancer, hollowing ourselves out to make room for joy and grief.

This untamed dance emerges through kabbalist meditations on sacred heresy. With a subversive naïvté, Nate becomes the sacred clown, reversing the normal order to invite the chaos that seeds creation. Rot Hat channels the ghosts of our histories, cracking open the narrative of how we see ourselves in relation to our past and to nature.

Credits

• Choreographer, performer Nate Yaffe
• Musician, composer Ben Grossman
• Dramaturge Thea Patterson
• Lighting Nien Tzu Weng
• Set, costume design Nate Yaffe
• Assistance in set research Lari Jalbert
• Production Le Radeau
• Residencies L’Annexe-A & Usine C (Projets du 3^e), La Cité des Hospitalières, Take me Somewhere (UK)

Financial support

• La danse sur les routes du Québec
• Festival TransAmériques, Respirations du FTA
• Le Conseil des arts du Canada