Lucky man, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: not only has he been running his own dance company, Eastman, since 2010 but he’s also director and resident choreographer of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and it was a collaboration between the two that brought him to Edinburgh with the first of the major dance events in the Edinburgh Festival proper.
Partly inspired by the tragic death of Ihsane Jarfi, a gay Moroccan man beaten to death in a racist and homophobic attack in Belgium in 2012, Ihsane also allows Cherkaoui to ponder his own sexuality and his mixed heritage. While an earlier work, Vlaemsch (chez moi), was rooted in memories of his maternal Flemish family, Ihsane reflects the experience of his Moroccan father, now thirty years dead, who emigrated to Belgium but never forgot his Arab heritage.
Cherkaoui plays games with language, with costume and with music as well as with dance forms that range from traditional to athletic breakdance. But as with many of his productions, choreography had to wait its turn here with music, costume, set design and lighting. We opened with a student language class being taught on stage, while an artist deftly painted the relevant Arabic words on a wall. The flowing cursive script would later find its echo in the movement, particularly in the rippling arm movements of women.
But no sooner were we engaged in this playful scene when a door opened into real life violence with the cruel murder of a young man, and this set the shape for the rest of the piece. In a never-ending circle of death, destruction and quiet rebirth, characters appeared to die but reappear (were resurrected?) – even a sacrificed sheep got a further chance at life. We moved from peace to violence and back in moments. News footage of rubble, death and funerals appeared on the backcloth. There could have been a momentary frisson when flags and a Palestine T-shirt made an appearance but this was no agitprop show: Cherkaoui has described the piece as ‘sharing our time on earth’ and amid the grim images, coffee (or tea?) was poured and shared with the front row of the stalls.
So, did Ihsane belong in the ‘dance’ section of the Festival? Against the coming-and-going of the ensemble of (largely) women whose sinuous arms mined traditional Arabic dance, some solos briefly emerged – a duet for two men, then convulsive solos and some exhilaratingly athletic flips and slow-mo handstands. It had impact but none of it would have been the same on a bare stage. Costume – largely traditional – and music were foregrounded, with the onstage instruments including constant rhythmic percussion and the voice of the viola d’amore, a kind of viol whose sympathetic strings give a sweetly warm sound and chimed with the male and female vocals.
Towards the end came moments of almost absolute stillness when sand was poured slowly from one to another in a series of hands and bowls. Tiny tea-lights were set out in pattern and then slowly removed until only one remained…
The obligatory trigger warnings for Ihsane included ‘references to genocide, homophobia, violence, animal cruelty and fake blood’. None of which did any service to this quietly lovely show.
