NBH (Natural Born Healer)

NBH (Natural Born Healer) is a poetic solo performance, halfway between fiction and autobiography. It speaks of homelessness, of a long journey of healing, of a tragic destiny where the protagonist escapes death and sets out to meet himself. A solitary crossing of the desert during which memories are revisited, invoked, abandoned or healed. One walks there as in a dream inspired by David Lynch's cinema.

The title, Natural Born Healer, is a nod to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which like Gregg Araki's Doom Generation, is a cult film from the 90s where macabre road trips and love stories are superimposed. The piece questions the notion of departure, often with a very limited choice: ‘To stay and suffer, or to leave?’ This story is a prayer, a breath of life, an impulse, a healing song, a tale on how to love and survive. It says ‘I survived and I have just been born.’

• Jihan Imago is a hyper sensitive performer, visual artist, drawer and writer, of Algerian origin, born in France in the 80s. This heritage as well as being trans tints his works of a particular glance on society. His favorite subjects are mental health, loneliness, living in the margin, homelessness and the relationship to God and philosophy. Jihan trained in drawing and silver photography in the 90s and later developed his work in screenwriting and poetry. Early in 2019, he decided to approach the body as a medium of exploration and expression, to the discovery of his own language.

‘As a poet and visual artist, I like to think of each work as a stage of transformation. It is an incredible opportunity to go to yet unexplored or uncomfortable areas and make a change. To work with dance has challenged me a lot. I had to unlearn in order to learn. Imago, my artist name, refers to the hatching phase of the butterfly after the larva and cocoon. The great question this piece asks is: What is the post-butterfly phase? We will discover it together on stage.’ – JIHAN IMAGO