Shubbak - A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture

Published: 18 May 2015
Reporter: Vera Liber

Les Oiseaux by Nacera Belaza Credit: Antonin Pons Braley

Shubbak, window in Arabic, is London’s largest biennial festival of contemporary Arab culture. For its third festival, which runs from the 11 to 26 July, Shubbak presents UK premières and new commissions from artists across the Arab world.

Its dance programme will take place at Sadler’s Wells, Southbank Centre, The Place and The British Museum, featuring choreographers, artists and performers from Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Tunisia and Algeria.

The Great Court at the British Museum becomes the stage for two artists working between drawing and performance. Moroccan choreographer and dancer Radouan Mriziga performs his solo 55. Exploring the body’s relationship to space through simple gestures, Mriziga gradually measures the space and creates an intricate floor pattern.

Alexandrian-born Nazir Tanbouli creates large-scale drawings, starting from simple marks and gradually covering the ground. In the process of drawing, it becomes a performance. For Shubbak, Tanbouli will create new 12m long works inspired by the British Museum and a recent research trip to Egypt.

At Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank, Badke is a collaboration between Belgian choreographers Koen Augustijnen, Rosalba Torres Guerrero (les ballets C de la B), Hildegard De Vuyst (KVS) and ten Palestinian performers from different dance backgrounds, including traditional dabke, modern dance, hip-hop, capoeira and circus.

With When The Arabs Used to Dance at The Place, Tunisian choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb harks back in a bittersweet production to the '60s and '70s, the heyday of popular Arab cinema full of singing, dancing and smoking divas.

Returning to London for the first time in four years is Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza. Into the Night: Three Works at Sadler’s Wells’ Lilian Baylis Studio offers a chance to witness her physical ideas unfold over a longer encounter of three distinctive works Les Oiseaux, La Nuit and La Traversée.

Central to Belaza’s last 20 years of investigation is the search for freedom conveyed by a distinctive form of meditative minimalism, creating a thousand images without ever singling one out.

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