Bouchra Ouizguen has been inspiring HAU audiences since 2013. In her current work “Éléphant” the choreographer and her Compagnie O experiment with a shared wealth of experience, traditional singing techniques and the music repertoire of the Marrakesh region. A fragmented collective body emerges that is traversed by the movements of the performers, singers and musicians who lend their voices and identities. This body that oscillates between strength and fragility, evokes the ephemeral nature of the present. Swinging between splendour and simplicity, differences and commonality are magnified, revealing the precious and subversive character in the individual and in the collective. In this choreography of voices Ouizguen, who is one of the main figures of contemporary dance in Morocco, looks into the ancient roots of her home country and develops a dance that fills the present with new life and hope.

Bouchra Ouizguen is a dancer and choreographer. Born in Ouarzazate, Morocco in 1980, she now lives in Marrakesh. She is co-founder, along with Taoufiq Izzediou, of Morocco’s first contemporary dance company ANANIA, she has collaborated with Mathilde Monnier, Bernardo Montet, Boris Charmatz, Julie Nioche and Abdellah Taïa, and she founded the Compagnie O in 2010.

Her work draws on questions around society, art and pop culture, and in addition her work frequently deals with the social meaning of femininity. In her work “Ha!” at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in 2015 she stood on stage with three traditional Aïtas – nightclub singers who are seen as prostitutes in Morocco and as such are equally glorified and spurned. Her work “Corbeaux”, which she developed as a performance in public space together with Compagnie O, premiered in 2018 at part of the project “Claiming Common Spaces” by the Alliance of International Production Houses, which was seen at HAU and at various outdoor spaces in Berlin.

[Source: hebbel-am-ufer.de]

TFB Nr. 1900