Cie Chara
DANCE AND VISUAL ART
ABOUT CIE CHARA
Cie Chara is a young Moroccan-German dance and visual arts company based in Morocco, founded in 2022 by Yassine Alaoui Ismaili and Friederike Frost, who have experience as performers, organisers, curators and choreographers in their own country Morocco and Germany for the past ten years.
Cie Chara’s works are inspired by the transnational processes of artistic work between Germany and Morocco, the choreographies of everyday life and social change, as well as the individual experiences and urban dance heritage of the company members.
Their objective is to create creations that speak of a Morocco far from orientalist phantasies, and to present them in Morocco as well as internationally.
As well, Cie Chara aims to give a possibility to young dancers to become professional, through working with the company as well as by offering workshops and regular trainings on dance (practical as well as theoretical and multimedia).
Yassine Alaoui Ismaili & Friederike Frost
YASSINE ALAOUI ISMAILI
Yassine “Yoriyas” Alaoui Ismaili is a photographer, performer, choreographer and dance coach. Yoriyas’ work is an intuitive observation of public space, a documentation of daily life and social change in Morocco. Urban and contemporary dance influences his artistic work, both in dance and photography.
Yoriyas received several art residencies and prizes, such as a residency from “L’Institut pour la Photographie Lille” (2021) or “Cité des Arts Paris” (2019), the award “Young Arab Contemporary Creation” of the “Friends of the Arab World Institute” in Paris (2019) and the “7th Prize for Contemporary African Photography” at Photo Basel (2018). His images have been published in the New York Times, National Geographic or the Guardian.
Yoriyas has been several times Moroccan breaking champion. From 2015, he curated for several years the HipHop program of the cultural space “L’Uzine” in Casablanca, where he coached and trained young hip hop dancers. He has worked as a dancer for Bernardo Montet and companies such as 2kFar or Mathieu Ma Fille in Morocco, France and Belgium, as well as choreographing own work such as “Gnawa Breakers” that has been presented in Morocco as well as in the Expo Universal in Milan, Italy.
FRIEDERIKE FROST
Friederike “Frieda” Frost is a performer, choreographer, cultural manager, dance teacher and researcher, who lives and works between Germany and Morocco. The fusion of dance styles and cultures, improvisation and physicality of movement characterize her artistic work – while always emphasizing the individuality of the performer.
Frieda Frost was a Factory Artist at the Tanzhaus nrw in 2020-2022 with her German collective nutrospektif, with which she works at the intersection of contemporary and urban dance, has developed improvisational performance concepts such as “Street vs. Stage” or “moment(urb)an” and worked as dancer or choreographer for several theatres and companies such as Schauspielhaus Bochum or Pottporus e.V./Renegade.
Frieda Frost is working on a PhD on hip hop dance at the Institute for Dance and Movement Culture at the University of Sport Cologne, is a member of the Advisory Board “Neue Künste Ruhr” for the cutural minestry of Northrhine-Westfalia, a founding member of the European Hip Hop Studies network and has published academic articles in international journals and books on hip hop culture.
CIE CHARA 