In Avignon, Arabic is spoken chiefly through dance

L'Orient-Le Jour

5 days ago

This year, Arabic is the guest of honor at the Avignon Festival. Sweeping away the xenophobic prejudices fostered by politicians, 10 shows from the Arab world — including six choreographic creations — give dance a place of honor.
Through these works, pride, resistance, and sometimes disappointed hopes emerge. A hypnotic choreography, Ethiopian melodies, and gripping actresses come together to expose the violence of an invisible system in Lebanon.
Everything was in place to provoke the audience's applause at the first show of the Avignon Festival — the opening event of the Arab program.
In "When I Saw the Sea," Lebanese choreographer Ali Chahrour immediately breaks the fourth wall and shows us what we all need to hear: a call to stop closing our eyes.
On stage, the intertwined destinies of three women from sub-Saharan Africa recount the violence, isolation and humiliation inflicted on them by the kafala system, which oppresses migrant women from Africa and South Asia.
This marks a turning point for the Lebanese art scene, where previously silenced voices are now speaking up and finally becoming the subjects of their own stories.
In this 79th edition, which stands in solidarity with the people of Gaza — also oppressed and silenced — the artistic approach is eloquent and signifies an act of resistance.
In the shadow of the performers, singer Lynn Adib and musician Abed Kobeissy create an immersive atmosphere, managing to elevate a powerful message through a unique composition.
The evident vulnerability of Rania, Tenei and Zena is accompanied by a powerfully free choreography, breaking free from resignation to embrace a kind of burning boldness.
Our bodies are territories in fray
In the same spirit of dissent, the solo performance of Belgian-Tunisian choreographer Mohammad Tubakri stands out.
His work with its telling title "Every-body knows what tomorrow brings and we all know what happened yesterday," plays on the double meaning of 'every-body' (each body) and 'everybody' (everyone). It expresses the idea that, individually as well as collectively, our bodies carry the remains of the past and the ability to illuminate our future.
This legacy, sometimes palpable, sometimes imperceptible, is one Tubakri urges us to question, especially regarding which dance forms Western standards deem legitimate. Like many Arab dancers in Cairo or Marrakesh, Tubakri had to assimilate into so-called 'legitimate' dances, while other practices were not recognized as art.
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Thus, he calls upon classical and contemporary dance just as much as breakdance and hip-hop, which he strives to reclaim for their political and subversive potential, and also the popular Maghreb dance called ' shtih.'
Guided by the sharp words of Essia Jaibi, his reflective choreographic work sees the body as a field of tension, traversed by power dynamics, highlighting the challenges faced by dancers and choreographers in the MENASA regions (Middle East–North Africa–South Asia), who are often confronted by dominant expectations and perspectives.
His dance is a language that communicates with the body, and not everything is meant to be translated. Sometimes elusive, his performance abolishes hierarchies between genres and reveals a raw force, a deep grounding that connects us to the struggle for freedom to dance in one's own language.
Rediscovering a lushness in the desert
What brings Mohammad Tubakri's performance close to "Magec/The Desert" by Moroccan choreographer Radwan Mriziga is a shared taste for drawing on various repertoires and a mutual desire to deconstruct imperialist narratives.
While one works with language, the other works with space. In Mriziga's piece, the desert is not merely a void or a cruel, inert land; it is a place of passage and transformation, crisscrossed by peoples who bear knowledge, rich in poetry and harmonies forged with the environment. From the outset, this vision sweeps away utilitarian concepts while avoiding Orientalism.
In this show, heritage is reappropriated and reinvented. In the dark of night, a mystical procession emerges in the Celestins' cloister, gradually enveloped in incense with red ashes. Under the auspices of a great solar disk revealing the vastness of the desert, we witness delicate rituals associated with Magec, the Amazigh sun king of the Canaries.
To the rhythmic beat of little golden finger cymbals, six dancers march masked, wearing costumes that evoke the world of animals and indigenous plants, as well as motifs from cave paintings.
They take turns personifying the soul of the Moroccan desert: the graceful antelope, the quick snake and the powerful scorpion each present their noble heritage, slowly shaping a collective dialogue.
In the dancers' formations, we see both the idea of architectural composition, the devout movement of the sundial and the geometric sacredness of Belgian choreographer Keersmaeker, who trained Mriziga and who is presenting 'Brel' at Avignon.
According to Mriziga, it was the weeks spent in the heart of the desert that forged a genuine bodily grammar, enriched by various inspirations such as the writings of Maia Tellit Hawad, a Franco-Tuareg scholar, or those of poet Hawad Mahmoudan.
Craftsmanship of Tunisian women artisans
Attending "Laaroussa Quartet" by Selma and Sofian Ouissi is like hearing a concert where the instruments are gestures. A female quartet joins in reading unique choreographic scores, where the movements are meticulous, both firm and delicate. Their fingers sculpt, in the spotlight, an infinitely delicate pottery.
Behind them, a wide screen pulls us right into the heart of Sejnan, a modest region of Tunisia where a community of 60 women maintains their mastery of the fire art.
"Laaroussa" is, above all, a popular artistic project founded by the choreographers to alleviate the extremely harsh economic conditions affecting this community. In tribute, it is both the sensitive crafting of scores and the making of a choreo-documentary that captures the essence of a demiurgic, ancestral, almost sacred gesture. It gives it new vibrancy, greater visibility and a way to keep existing.
Deeply committed, the 79th edition of the Avignon Festival paid homage to its history and values, which are rooted in cultural and intercultural dialogue.
Still lingering, however, is the question of why dance was given pride of place at this festival. What explains this predominance, and is it not somewhat bittersweet to see the low representation of contemporary Arab dramatic works at such a major international event that has chosen Arabic as its honored language?
Dance indeed is one of the most popular forms of artistic expression in the Arab world, just as poetry is, and readings abounded at this festival. Yet, despite arriving later on the Arab arts scene, dramatic production is no less vital.
All the more, now — as words more than ever need to be spoken, carried and heard in France and the West — it is legitimate to wonder why this magnificent vehicle that is theater for the Arabic language is underrepresented, and whether the Avignon Festival's offer remains at the level of a manifesto.