work

atlas

Dance

El Houssine Ait Belbaz, Mohamed Bouriri, Mohammed Guechri, Othman Oubella, Maeva Destrebecq

Choreography

Yassine Alaoui Ismaili & Friederike Frost

Created in residencies at

Grand Studio Bruxelles, Scène National Carré-Colonnes (in the frame of the laureate of TAKLIF 2024 Festival ‘On Marche’ Marrakech)

in coproduction with Scène National Carré-Colonnes

‘atlas’ (working title) explores the concept of calm, the place of spirituality, the human and animal bodies and movements. The atlas bone, which supports our skull, is one of the metaphors for our research, for organic movements and for the continuity of flow. The movements of the break, related to the floor, the neck as well as other parts of the body, are the foundation of our research.
The atlas also symbolises our second source of inspiration: the Atlas region in Morocco. Struck by a major earthquake, it nevertheless represents great beauty, resilience, and spirituality. This resilience and call to spirituality guides the creation in the quality of the movements, the dramaturgy, and the soundscape of our research. The repetition of movements and music, with chants and atmospheric sounds, suggest a link with the resilience and spirituality of the cypher/community of urban dance, and inform the creation.

HIT 7AYT حايط حيث

(because of the wall)

Dance

El Houssine Ait Belbaz, Mohamed Bouriri, Mohammed Guechri, Othman Oubella

Choreography

Yassine Alaoui Ismaili & Friederike Frost

Dramaturgy

Mijke Harmsen

Music

Antonio de Luca, Gregor Schwellenbach, Abdellah M. Hassak, Massive Attack

Created in residencies at

Tazi Fondation/L’Uzine Casablanca, FOCUS DANSE Rabat, Détours Festival/Centre Culturel Bruegel Bruxelles, Amercian Art Center Casablanca, Grand Studio Bruxelles, AGORA/Montpellier Danse (in the frame of the laureate of TAKLIF 2024 Festival ‘On Marche’ Marrakech)

in coproduction with Schouwburg Kortrijk

HIT 7AYT حايط حيث (because of the wall) is inspired by the city of Casablanca and its inhabitants, gestures, and choreographies of daily Moroccan life. Four dancers with roots in urban dance transform these movements of daily life into details, intentions and urgencies. They explore the walls in the city as a separation and connection between public and private space, as sites of observation or limits of movement. Memories of family and friend’s gatherings, meetings with friends or strangers are transformed to physical movements and present a bodily vision of a Moroccan society between observation and individuality, tradition and innovation.

SELAM

Dance

El Houssine Ait Belbaz, Mohamed Bouriri, Mohammed Guechri, Othmane Oubella

Choreography

Friederike Frost & Yassine Alaoui Ismaili

Dramaturgy

Friederike Frost

Music

Abdellah M. Hassak, HipHop tracks and Massive Attack

Coproduction

Schouwburg Kortrijk

SELAM is a short piece that brings the city of Casablanca into the public space, combining the participatory and entertaining elements of urban dance with Moroccan culture and the intimate atmosphere of dance theater.

Four dancers appropriate the public space, greet each other, stay or decide to leave. Moroccan gestures and codes invade the public space and transform local places into new meanings. The dancers become creatures and characters, melting into the floor, slowly, gently, or erupting in energy as they spin to hip-hop beats and form a cypher. They hold each other back in a rush of (e)motion, fusing individual breaking movements with traditional and ritual Moroccan dances, gestures and signs. In the end, they leave the audience with a new understanding of the city of Casablanca and Moroccan culture.

SELAM is a participatory performance created for public spaces. The performance takes place in three different locations in the city, each with a different atmosphere, background and space. SELAM not only guides the audience through the city, but also invites them to participate in the performance. The dancers guide the audience to walk with them from one place to the next.

tanz.match for HIT 7AYT حايط حيث

(because of the wall)

Dance

El Houssine Ait Belbaz, Mohamed Bouriri, Mohammed Guechri, Othmane Oubella

Director

Yassine Alaoui Ismaili

Video & Edit

Charaf Lahib

Choreography

Yassine Alaoui Ismaili & Friederike Frost

Dramaturgy

Mijke Harmsen

Music

Gregor Schwellenbach & Antonio de Luca

Production

Tanz NRW Festival, tanz.match

tanz.match to HIT 7AYT حايط حيث (because of the wall)
The format tanz.match invites the audience to engage with an artistic production from a different perspective. In the run-up to the festival Tanz NRW 2023, Cie Chara produced three videos to make their production context in Morocco and the inspirations for the creation HIT 7AYT visible for the wider public.

Three videos showcase the three main inspirations for HIT 7AYT: The Wall, The Public Space and The Private Space:
“The tanz.match for “HIT 7AYT حايط حيث (because of the wall)” invites us to explore and perceive our own surroundings anew. During the rehearsal process in Morocco, three short video instructions were created that bring the viewers into contact with the observations and inspirations of the research process. The focus is on the three main themes of the production: private space, public space and spatial boundaries (the wall). The audience is invited to gather their own experiences with the (movement) tasks: How does a specific interaction in private and public space translate into a choreographic movement language? How does a wall break or influence the flow of movement?” (Tanz NRW 2023, tanz.match)

Videos:

Part 1: The Wall / Part 2: Private Space / Part 3: Public Space (link coming soon)

Dance

Walaa Amezzargou, Fatima-Zahra El Mamouny, Sarah Buono-Fredette, Maeva Destrebecq, Friederike Frost

Concept & Direction

Friederike Frost

Video & Edit

Friederike Frost

Poem

Yasmin Ben Malek

Funded by

Maecania Stiftung für Frauen in Wissenschaft und Kunst

T’HARKAT is an artistic and practice-based research project exploring how female dancers reclaim Moroccan public space through movement. In a society where visibility in public space remains gendered, the project asks what it means for women to move, to take space, and to be seen. Bringing together Moroccan and Morocco-based female urban and contemporary dancers as well as a Moroccan poet and singer, T’HARKAT creates a dialogue between dance, sound, and language — between heritage and resistance. It challenges the male-coded history of urban dance forms such as Breaking, transforming them into acts of empowerment and embodied freedom. In Darija, T’HARKAT means “she moved” — a phrase that becomes both declaration and gesture of presence, strength, and collective empowerment.

T’HARKAT began in the summer of 2022 and reached its first stage of completion in autumn 2023 with the release of an initial artistic video. The project continues to evolve through an extended artistic documentation (currently in progress) and accompanying academic research on women’s presence and movement in public space in Morocco. In parallel, an academic article examining gender negotiations within Morocco’s breaking scene in the lead-up to the Olympic Games has been published, expanding the project’s dialogue between artistic practice and sociocultural research.

Article “Breaking in Morocco – Opportunities and challenges for professionalization and gender equality in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games” (2024) published in the Global HipHop Studies Journal.