When French choreographer Hervé Koubi learned of his Algerian ancestry at age 25, he devoted himself to learning more about his roots in the land where his ancestors had lived, and developing a remarkable examination of identity. The hypnotic, remarkable Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (What the Day Owes to the Night), inspired by Orientialist paintings and Islamic stone carvings, draws on the novel of the same name by Yasmina Khadra to trace Koubi’s relationship with his own lineage through an eye-catching, inspired work of modern dance that the New York Times called “a creation of poetic beauty.”
Set to a musical mash-up that mixes Sufi music with J.S. Bach, the twelve dancers from Algeria and Burkina Faso—originally street dancers skilled at hip-hop and martial arts—give jaw-dropping performances, lifting, leaping, catching, and spinning in this “exploration of masculinity and male beauty, meditative and at times tender, containing moments of striking virtuosity” (The New Yorker).
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