Barcelona is eagerly awaiting a new performance by one of the greats of European contemporary dance, an Antwerp-born dancer and choreographer with roots in Morocco who hasn’t failed to delight local audiences ever since he made his Grec Festival debut in 2008 with Sutra, a show featuring Shaolin Temple monks. It was a multicultural and unusual creation, like many from this innovative and particularly prolific choreographer, a storyteller who expresses himself through dance and could be considered a thinker of movement.

After bringing choreographies such as Dunas (with María Pagés; Grec 2010) and Puz/zle (Grec 2013) to Barcelona with his company, Eastman , he’s now back as the artistic director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève. The Ballet will perform a choreography that builds on the family themes first addressed in his 2022 Vlaemsch (chez moi), a piece about his mother and his Flemish roots. In his new piece, he explores the figure of a Moroccan father he lost at a young age while also paying tribute to Ihsane Jarfi, a young gay Moroccan man who was murdered in Liège in 2012 at the age of 32, the victim of  a racist and homophobic crime.

The search for inner peace, the end of conflicts, and the multiple identities that coexist within each of us, but also the endless cycle of destruction and rebirth of the world are some of the themes in an artistic creation that draws on the rich musical landscape developed by the Tunisian composer Jasser Haj Youssef, Amine Amharech’s sensory set designs that are evocative of Moroccan landscapes, and Amine Bendriouich’s costumes inspired by traditional Berber dress.

A co-production of Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Eastman, Théâtre du Châtelet, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Tanz Köln, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Festspielhaus St. Pölten (AT), the Grec 2025 Festival de Barcelona, and Centre National des Arts Ottawa.

⚠️ 12.07 - Performance cancelled due to weather conditions. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.