Fighting, foot to foot, with the weight of convention. Facing, mano a mano, the harshness of the street. Working your body to rise above yourself. This is how hip-hop was born, towards the end of the 60s. And because it is still practised in this spirit, it has lost none of its assertive power. But as with any emerging form of expression, its outpouring of forms has been refined and disciplined over time. Some creators have seized upon it, hybridising it with other styles to take it to new horizons. Mourad Merzouki is one of them. He grew up in hip-hop and has made it grow in his own way. Vertikal, with the K that is to some extent his trademark (and the initial of the Käfig company he founded), marks a new stage in his research. The project seems haunted by a dream as old as dance itself: to be as free as air, to become as light as a breath. This utopia is realised here using techniques borrowed from the circus. To launch his troupe into the conquest of vertical dance, the director of the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne also relied on a space of high walls punctuated with holds and apparatus. Bathed in superb lighting and carried by Armand Amar's original music, the dancers take off, soar at will, playing with their weight like virtuoso mountaineers, opening up new paths towards other choreographic skies.
Produced by Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne / Compagnie Käfig
Types
- Dance
- Art and shows