Nazar Rakhmanov

Nazar Rakhmanov (born in Votkinsk, 1991) is a Tatar-Russian choreographer who graduated from SNDO in 2022. In his interdisciplinary performances and artistic research, recurring themes include darkness, rituals, animality, 'otherness', and 'the invisible'. With Frascati Producties, he created Yurodifice (2022) as part of Beginnings, and The Borderland: dark promise (2024).

Nazar Rakhmanov obtained his bachelor's degree in Comparative Religious Studies from the university in Moscow in 2009, where he developed a particular interest in Hinduism and the religious Kundalini yoga tradition. In 2010, he began his movement practice as an assistant dance therapist for people with special needs.

After encountering nomadic Butoh theater and contemporary dance, he decided to come to the Netherlands in 2018 to deepen his independent artistic practice at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) of the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam. During his studies, he undertook a work placement on the island of Java, to familiarise himself with the exuberant traditions of ‘Jaranan’ trance dance rituals, which had a great impact on his practice.

Since graduating from the SNDO in 2022, Nazar has been working as a theater maker and performer for various companies in the Netherlands. As part of Frascati's Beginnings, he presented his solo piece Yurodifice in collaboration with queer-punk musician Leonid Kotel'nikov (a.k.a. fake_trailers), in which he explores the consequences of inner brokenness and displacement through video, live performance, and music.

He further developed mixing the disciplines of video, live performance, music and rituals in The Borderland: dark promise (2024) at Frascati Producties. In a completely dark theater space, the audience faces infrared video images that depict a liminal space of people forced to flee their homeland but unable to settle elsewhere, embracing darkness as their only haven of freedom.