EIF: Ihsane
Festival Theatre 18/8/26
Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève
Eastman
Choreography: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Jasser Haj Youssef Music Director & viola d’amore, Gaël Cadoux piano, Nizar Rohana oud, Gabriele Miracle Bragantini percussion, Fadia Tomb El-Hage & Mohammed El Arabi Serghini vocals
Amine Amharech set designer, Amine Bendriouich costume designer, Fabiana Piccioli lighting designer,
Maxime Guislain videographer
Devastating, uplifting, violent, seductive, and beautiful: the UK premiere of ‘Ihsane’ by visionary choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was an extraordinary experience, and a difficult one to capture in words. The title comes from the Arabic concept of kindness, goodness, and relationship with the universe. It is also the name of a young gay Moroccan-Belgian man, Ihsane Jarfi, murdered in a 2012 hate crime in Belgium. The work also draws on Cherkaoui’s complex relationship with his late father, a proud Moroccan. A deeply personal story with universal themes.
The ensemble of eighteen dancers blended classical ballet, contemporary dance, dervish-like whirling, and slow, hypnotic breakdancing in a fluid, continuous flow. The different strands of the story moved smoothly through various scenes, propelled by dance, song, spoken words in Darjia (Moroccan Arabic), French, and English, Arabic calligraphy inscribed on the scenery, and music. The live music, much of it composed by viola d’amore player Jasser Haj Youssef, added a whole new dimension to the work, providing an atmospheric background to some scenes and moving into the foreground in others. The two singers, male and female, were magnificent. Initially the four musicians and two singers were invisible, but screens gradually moved to reveal them grouped on a platform at the back of the stage, gently spotlit. Their rhythmic music and song accompanied the dance, and vice versa, an equal balance of drums pulsing, bodies moving, and voices chanting.
The sensitive and creative lighting, beautiful flowing costumes based on Berber clothes, a fluid set adorned with beautiful Moroccan patterns and sumptuous carpets, and the sparing use of projected videos from Cherkaoui’s own past all enhanced the production.
The dancers were perfection, rising to every physical challenge, and conveying a complex array of motions and emotions with utter confidence. So many contrasting feeling were evoked during the evening, but as Cherkaoui said in one of his direct addresses to the audience, ”We’re just here for love.” This is an exceptional work.
Olwyn Alexander reviewed ‘Sounds of Ihsane’ on 14 August: https://www.edinburghmusicreview.com/reviews/ba5dnyhowqjf9e51tgy4mr9628dfqw
https://www.east-man.be/en/15/111/Ihsane
EIF: https://www.eif.co.uk
Photo credit: EIF/Filip Van Roe
