Romaeuropa Festival and Short Theatre 2026 once again join forces to present the Italian premiere of L’Echo, the latest production by the Franco-Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza. A duet bringing the artist herself on stage alongside Valérie Dréville, the French actress known for her thirty-year career in auteur cinema. An artistic encounter that seems an obvious choice. For a long time, the choreographer has been exploring the grey area where the “junction point” between speech and the language that sets the body in motion resides. In Valérie Dréville she found a partner equally inhabited by the power of imagination and the strength of an intense inner life.
With its unerring coherence over the past thirty years, Nacera Belaza’s work traces a creative path whose singularity recalls the radical research of the avant-garde of the 1970s. On the occasion of this encounter—initiated by MC93—the choreographer and Valérie Dréville began working on a new piece centred on the body as a receptacle of imagination. At the core of this exploration lies the expressive potential of dance, which Belaza has long described as “a spoken word within the body,” a vital driving force in her artistic journey. An instinctive complicity soon emerged between them, carried by the inner density of this major theatrical figure and by her remarkable ability to embody speech within the body. What followed was a process of deepening this resonance and revealing the subterranean echoes that link their two artistic worlds.
Nacera Belaza was born near Médéa in Algeria and has lived in France since the age of five. After studying modern literature, she set up her own company in 1989. She became a self-taught dancer, driven by the vital need to express herself, to express and unravel the complexity of her dual cultural background. It was during childhood and adolescence, in secret, that her language emerged spontaneously, drawing material first from herself and then from literature. Since then, her work has explored movement in a serene, deep and continuous breath, confronting patience, discipline and simplicity with the “deafening din of our lives”, giving gesture its existential utility. In 2015, she was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2024 an Officier. In 2008, Le Cri received the Prix de la révélation from the Syndicat de la Critique. In 2017, the SACD also paid tribute to her career by awarding her the Choreographer Prize. Her work is regularly performed in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. She has set up a cooperative in Algeria that enables her to work regularly in the country of her origins.
Valérie Dréville trained at the Théâtre national de Chaillot (with Antoine Vitez, Yannis Kokkos, Aurélien Recoing and Georges Aperghis) and at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique de Paris (with Viviane Théophilides, Claude Régy, Gérard Desarthe and Daniel Mesguich). Her theatre career was marked by her meeting with Antoine Vitez, her teacher at Chaillot, who directed her in Électre, Le Soulier de satin, La Célestine and La Vie de Galilée. She joined the Comédie Française in 1988, leaving in 1993. She played in Racine’s Iphigénie under the direction of Yannis Kokkos. She also acted under the direction of Claude Régy in Le Criminel by Leslie Kaplan, La Terrible Voix de Satan by Gregory Motton, Quelqu’un va venir by Jon Fosse, Des couteaux dans les poules by David Harrower, Variations sur la mort by Jon Fosse, Comme un chant de David, translation of the psalms by Henri Meschonnic, and La Mort de Tintagiles by Maurice Maeterlinck. Her film credits include major roles in La Sentinelle, directed by Arnaud Desplechin, and La Maladie de Sachs, directed by Michel Deville. She also performed Racine’s Phèdre under the direction of Luc Bondy at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. In recent years she has travelled regularly to Russia to work with Anatoli Vassiliev and his company. Médée-Matériau by Heiner Müller premiered in Moscow in 2001, and has since toured the world (Paris, Avignon, Rennes, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, etc.). In 2018, she starred in Le Récit d’un homme inconnu, based on Chekhov’s novella, again directed by Anatoli Vassiliev, with Sava Lolov, Stanislas Nordey and Romane Rassendren. She is associate artist at the Théâtre national de Strasbourg. She has recently performed Les Possédés and Edelweiss under the direction of Sylvain Creuzevault, and Liberté à Brême under the direction of Cédric Gourmelon. She is preparing a show with Jérôme Bel.
choreography, light and sound design Nacera Belaza
performance Nacera Belaza, Valérie Dréville
stage management Christophe Renaud
production Compagnie Nacera Belaza; MC93–Bobigny
co-production Festival d’Automne à Paris; deSingel, campus des Arts, Antwerp; Charleroi danse, Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles; Chaillot – Théâtre National; Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne; Mille Plateaux / CCN La Rochelle within the framework of the residency support programme of the Ministère de la Culture
the company is supported by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture; Région Île-de-France; Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; Institut français for international touring
in co-realisation with Romaeuropa Festival
ph. Simon Gosselin