Lacking sun, know how to ripen in ice.
Henri Michaux, Tent Posts

Tarab is a key concept of Arab culture. It refers to the emotion created by the combination of poetry, music and spirituality. The Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, also known as “the mother of all Arabs”, is the very embodiment of this synthesis. Tarab could be compared to groove in funk, to swing in jazz, or to duende in flamenco. It’s that indefinable and inspired state of music that we will bring to this new work.

As an integral part of this new stage of choreographic writing, already undertaken in Nil, the music will provide the opportunity once again to collaborate with the composer Sir Richard Bishop. His worldview and inspiration find an echo in the fields that we explore; notably in our questioning of the relationships between the earthly and things of this world, spirituality and the divine, the body and sensuality.
In Tarab, music and dance are interwoven in a “groovy Sufi ceremony” based on the search for an ecstatic dance, and organized around the group and its different personalities. This ensemble will be propelled by the music with Arabo-Andalusian accents composed by Sir
Richard Bishop.
Our artistic approach aims at creating a movement language capable of inducing a form of hypnosis when performed. This exploration is filled with the curves and the flowing links found in Arabic calligraphy, to which we add references belonging to the history of Western dance. Doing so allows us to instill elements of imagination, or humor, which go beyond simple references or sources, and permits the necessary distance for reinventing ourselves.
This approach emerges as well from the manner in which we use the singular gestural language which gave rise to the style known as FUITTFUITT, created in 2006 and characterized by an ornamental and baroque dimension, devoid of syncopation: the movement unfolds in an uninterrupted flow without repeating itself. The result is a mesmerizing dance, inhabited by a desire for infinity, because we are indeed possessed by the thought of entering the movement and never leaving it.
The ten dancers present on stage sustain this desire to further draw out time while creating a denser sense of community. After the intoxicating experience of creating Nil, a piece for six dancers in which we explored group work using a musical score inspired by the Middle East and its emblematic characteristics, we wanted to renew this experience with ten dancers, a symbolic number to celebrate the 10 years of our company’s founding; the Middle East for its evocative power, in which we draw our inspiration and endeavor to give a image devoid of references to current events in the Arab world. It is rather a question, as with the piece Nil, of presenting a kind of spatial, innovative and jubilant trance.
The notion of “happiness”, however, in such a turbulent context as that of the Middle East raises the question: what does this notion mean? Why does a child growing up in Cairo or Ramallah seem to be sustained by this energy or unfailing desire to live? And this despite the destitution and the pervasive threats… Without lapsing into a naive idealism, or into an excessive myth of a fantasized Orient, we have seen this vitality while there; it doesn’t give rise to disillusionment and offers an important place to dance.
Dance, found in nearly every home and even in the streets, is like a language passed down since
the dawn of time; the movements seem woven into the fabric of life through an unconscious know-how. This remark results from firsthand observations during our travels in that part of the world, to places which inspire and regenerate us. Does this vigor, this longing, this vital energy that we’ve experienced while there come from Tarab?
This is precisely the question that we will undertake and develop in our new work.

Choreography Laurence Yadi, Nicolas Cantillon
Lighting design Patrick Riou
Musical composition, recording and mixing Jacques Mantica
Costume production collaboratrices artistiques Olga Kondrachina
Artistic partners Graziella Jouan, Sir Richard Bishop, Nicolas Field
 

Dancers Laurence Yadi, Luc Bénard, Nicolas Cantillon, Gildas Diquero, Ryan Djojokarso, Karima El Amrani, Victoria Hoyland, Lola Kervroedan, Aline Lopes (apprentice dancer), Margaux Monetti
Apprentice dancer (student CFC-MPA) : Soraya Emery