Life and Work with Nadia Hagen-Onuktav

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nadia Hagen-Onuktav.

Nadia Hagen is the artistic director of Flam Chen Pyrotechnic Theatre Company and the Finale ceremony of the All Souls Procession.

Nadia spent many years as a musician with the infamous group Crash Worship and other theatrically based groups, as well as, directing both traditional theatre and dance in the southwest region before founding Flam Chen in 1994.

Since 1996, Flam Chen has put much of its energy and passion for quality and spectacle based performance into the Procession on an annual basis. Nadia designs, choreographs and manufactures costumes and props. Mentors Spirit groups and empower 100’s of other artists and creatives to dedicate time and resources to furthering the “new circus” genre and into the Procession, to honor of the dead.

Paul Weir is a founding board member of MMOS and the Technical Director for Flam Chen. He has innovated large scale industrial sets and rigging for both projects and currently runs the newly opened MSA Annex Festival Grounds on the west side of Tucson. He honed his skills climbing in Yosemite and as an aerial dancer in the early 90’s.

Nadia and Paul collaborated on various art projects in Tucson in the early ’00s. Flam Chen has performed in Mexico, Canada, across the US and Macau, China. They are partners in both life and crime.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I have come to think of my career in Circus/Theatre akin to “bushwhacking.” Carving a difficult path where no one else had dared to tread. Back in the day, circus arts like aerial acrobatics, stilts, and fire performance were only done by a handful of performers, most with family traditions that were handed down from generation to generation.

In the early ’00s, there was a revival of a fringe circus that arose from the punk rock and Industrial music scenes. This is chronicled beautifully in the book, “Freaks and Fire, The Reinvention of Circus” by J. Dee Hill.
The genre was so new, there were only a handful of fire spinners in the US.

Tricks were new, tools had to be prototyped- they could not be bought, Costumes also had to be designed and built from scratch – there was no cosplay or costuming tutorials to look to for reference. We had to invent everything ourselves, this was the challenge, but also the beauty and the invigoration of charting unknown territory.

Venues to perform this work were and still are a challenge to find.

I always look to my death as the clearest barometer of what I am doing. I see myself on my deathbed and I say” Would we be happy that we did this? ” Would we regret it if we didn’t do this?”

I’ve had a magical, insane, wonderful life and I have lots of crazy stories. A friend of mine said – “A good show is just a good show, but a Bad Show? That’s a story.” I keep that in mind when it’s a shit show.

Please tell us about Flam Chen/All Souls Procession.
Flam Chen and The All Souls Procession have a rep for large scale spectacle and multi-disciplinary collaborations.

We are proud to have opened up opportunities to many artists and provided a platform to show radical, visionary work over the years.

Our first major work, The Heavenly Court of the Celestial Ling-Ling, was staged in the Arcosanti vaults in honor of Paolo Soleri’s 70th Bday. Flam Chen collaborated with Molehill Orkestra and Bhuto dancers, Lucas Cox, and Jon McNamara. We incorporated, Bungee jumps, flaming trapeze, flaming instruments and four-legged stilt creatures into a surreal narrative about the journey into the land of dharma to retrieve Ling Ling’s head for proper burial.

Blending pop memes and punk rock sensibility with ancient spiritualism, Flam Chen put its foot on a path that has produced hundreds of original works.

The cast of Flam Chen has morphed over the years but has always been built on an “ensemble” model with characters and themes reflecting the various interests and skill sets of its members.

Our major themes have included, Rites Of Spring, which won a Fringe of the Fringe excellence award at the NYC Fringe Festival, It is concerned with SuperOrganisms and their organizational structures and how those models are reflective of our own “ensemble theatre” model.

The “Boneshaker Trilogy” was a series of shows evolving the dysfunctional Circus of Papa Boneshaker, presented at various national festivals and El Tour de Tucson.

We were thrilled to present”Octopus Heart” by up and coming Director, Monica Silva, which premiered March 28, at our new venue, MSA Annex Festival Grounds, with sold out shows.

We are most proud to see the proliferation of new circus as a dedicated art form, with circus schools and troupes in every city of the US.

Who have you been inspired by?
My greatest inspiration is my grandmother, Helga Hagen, She came of age in Germany, during the Holocaust and almost all her family and friends fled or were killed. Our ancestral home was stolen, as were all the family’s wealth and resources. She moved to NYC in 1955 and was a great fan of the arts and literature. She instilled in me a great love for art and a sense of celebration for the uniqueness and worth of every culture. Although her artistic life and those of her friends were destroyed by the Third Reich, she found inspiration and excitement in every day she lived.

I also find inspiration in authors such as Barbara Kingsolver and Octavia Butler, their deeply personal ability to look beyond the material plane, to create whole worlds and invite us into them.

And I’m always inspired by music, radical modern musicians like Diamonda Galas, Bjork and Azalea Banks, but also traditional artists such as Umm Kulthum and Anoushka Shankar, Dmi Mint Abba, Carmen Amaya… there are too many… especially in music, the legacy of female singers has been a source of strength for me.

Contact Info:

• Address: Venue: MSA Annex Festival Grounds 267 S. Avenida del Convento Tucson, AZ 85745
• Website: www.flamchen.com
• Phone: 520-272-9041
• Email: info@flamchen.com
• Instagram: Flam Chen
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flamchen/
• Other: UberHagenDesign on Etsy

Image Credit:
Kathleen Dreier, Karel Moonen

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