MAY HE RISE AND SMELL THE FRAGRANCE | Madách Nemzetközi Színházi Találkozó

MAY HE RISE AND SMELL THE FRAGRANCE 16

Ali Chahrour Company, Beirute, Lebanon

Director: Ali Chahrour

In Arabic with Hungarian and English subtitles.

1 hours, without breaks.

“May He Rise” is a dance performance and a ceremony, where death emerges from the depth of the earth to become a rite for life. The woman, the mourning priestess, summons the men so that they may experience grief and the pain of loss. Like a goddess, she brings them to the threshold of life and death, she moves their bodies, and from their anguish releases an action for life. She makes them question concepts tied to their masculinity—strength, heroism and toughness; rigidity, sluggishness, and fading—laying bare their vulnerabilities and weaknesses, exposing their impotence through the intensity of her voice, her energy and her lamentations.

“May He Rise” concludes Ali Chahrour’s trilogy on mourning rituals and their rich repertoire of movement, and the problematic of the presence of the body. Following “Fatmeh” and “Leila’s Death”, “May He Rise” offers an additional taste with a performance based on lamentations, mourning, dance, stories and legends summoned from Arab memory and local genres of movement—specifically from the region of Mesopotamia, also known as the Black Grounds.

Dance performance

Actors:
Ali Chahrour, Hala Omran, Abed Kobeisy, Ali Hout

Light designer: Guillaume Tesson
Sound designer: Khyam Allami
Stage designer: Issa Kandil
Costume designer: Rayya Morcos
Dramaturge: Junaid Sarieddeen
Music composed and performed by: "Two or The Dragon" / Ali Hout, Abed Kobeissy

Communication coordinator: Zyad Ceblany
Graphic designer: Nadine Helwe
Calligraphy: Ali Ceblany

Co-produced by: fabrik Potsdam with the support of Goethe institute, Arab fund for arts and culture ”Afac”. With the support of: Houna Center, Zoukak theatre company, The French institute in Beirut, Al Akhbar newspaper, L’orient le jour.

Special thanks: Montevideo, création Contemporaines- Atelier de fabrique artistique, les rencontre a l'échell.

Director and choreographer

Ali Chahrour

Kaszás Attila Stage

Ali Chahrour

At the national Institute of fine arts, where Ali Chahrour studied since 2008, “dramatic dance” - taught in second year - is the only choreographic training at university level in Lebanon. As a student, Ali Chahrour diversified his approaches to movement through workshops and trainings, In several European countries. He created his first piece for two dancers “On her lips, snow”, questioning the end of love, and presented it soon after his graduation in Beirut and the Netherlands in 2011. One year later, he created Danas that “explores the daily violence against the body”, a first step in building an aesthetic in his social, political and religious context, rejecting bodies that are formatted by the known technics of contemporary dance and putting forward a body “that has forgotten the grand discourses of the Arab world”. His most recent creations, Fatmeh and Leila’s death question the chiites rituals and their contemporary metamorphosis As Part of A trilogy Based on the presence of the Body in the death rituals in the Arab world and the intensity of the Body gestures in such an intense religious and social and political context, this 2 show was part of the official program of 70^th edition Festival d’Avignon 2016 And many other festival in the USA, Canada, France and Germany…

One year later he crated “ May he Rise and Smell the fragrance” as the last part of this trilogy, Based on poems, Myths and Stories From the Mesopotamians, Exploring the intimacy and the roughness of Lamentations and Sadness, that’s rooted in the history and the daily practice of this culture.

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