Sutton Theatres 21 November. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
The opening night of Sutton Theatres Marhaba Maghreb Festival, celebrating contemporary North African theatre and dance was a roaring success.
Hervé Koubi’s What The Day Owes To The Night is a very personal piece. Koubi found out about his Algerian roots late in life and, after visiting the country and finding little evidence of dance (apart from street dance) used the internet to find young Algerian dancers. Koubi has worked with the company of 12 dancers to create this piece about his personal history and the history of the Mediterranean and the contrasting and often conflicting cultures on its shores.
Koubi says that he didn’t want to simply teach the dancers the skills he learned in school, and has allowed them to showcase their innate talent in a meeting of styles. He believes that even though there are many great dancers in France, only Algerian dancers could do justice to this project. He may well be right, the men dance with such intensity and conviction in a simply outstanding show.
I am not an expert on dance, but even I know when something special is being presented. From the moment the lights began to slowly glow, revealing a mass of bodies that undulated across the stag, I was lost. This might well have had something to do with the fact that there were 12 fit young men with naked torsos on stage, but the design made this beautiful rather than sexual. The dim lighting was perfectly designed to highlight the muscle tone and movement of their arms and upper bodies, and the fact that there was only one tattoo to be seen among them (I did check very closely, being a consummate professional), along with the dancers’ costume of white trousers with various designs of panels and skirts – “for chastity” according to Koubi – brought a purity to the dance.
What these men can do with their bodies is phenomenal. From gravity-defying leaps and spins, to slow motion synchronicity, it was wonderful. Koubi says that he didn’t want a completely clean movement to the piece, and this makes for the most testosterone filled dance I’ve ever seen. Apparently the piece combines martial arts, capoeira (NOT a South American rodent – you live and learn), urban and contemporary dance. All I know is that it was brilliant. Moving, hypnotic, and breathtakingly brilliant. Koubi’s use of sacred music from European and North African cultures is evocative and matches the piece perfectly. There were moments when the audience were left gasping as men ran up their fellow dancers’ backs and launched themselves into space, while the shapes the men made together and held for a few beats before slowly moving on, gave moments of calm and contemplation.
A wonderful dance spectacle – here’s hoping that it will be shown to a wider audience in the UK to inspire our own young dancers.