Compagnie Hervé Koubi
The Barbaric Nights
Or The First Mornings of the World
Hervé Koubi: Artistic Director & Choreography
Music: Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gabriel Fauré, Algerian Folk Music
Powerful and virile, they fill the stage with their presence: street dancers, hip-hop performers, circus artists, and modern dance creators from Algeria, Morocco, Burkina Faso, France, and Israel. They all dance in the company that Hervé Koubi founded in 2010. None of them had stood on a stage before. Hervé Koubi chose them with the conviction that only street talents would bring the necessary strength and movement vocabulary for his projects. Since then, the dancers have enchanted their audiences with athleticism and grace, winning numerous awards.
Hervé Koubi’s path, however, looked very different at first: he grew up as the son of Algerian immigrants in France, initially studied pharmacy, but felt that this was not his calling. He studied dance and choreography and cultivated an eclectic movement language from street dance, Sufi, and hip-hop as the foundation for his choreographies.
In "Les Nuits Barbares," Koubi and his company embark on a journey through time to the past cultures around the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. For this, the dancers perform artistically and virtuously to classical music by Mozart, Wagner, and Fauré, as well as to racing percussion rhythms; they throw their bodies into stylized archaic rituals where helmets gleam and knives whirl. The choreography was enthusiastically celebrated at the international dance festival in Cannes, at the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, and during performances in the USA.
Image: Frédérique Calloch
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
