Latifa Laâbissi
Flaming Creatures
Engaging with imaginaries of strange contours, composing an album of singular figures, and twisting them – these are the choreographic gestures that Latifa Laâbissi explores, piece by piece. Alongside the singer and musician Walid Ben Selim, she invites ghosts here to mingle with the living, within the space of a dance populated by flamboyant creatures.
This new creation, imbued with presences, fantasies and lingering echoes, opens in the form of a circle. The refrain serves as its driving force: a haunting chorus, fragments of childhood – like a phantom soundscape – it sets the canvas for a dance that unfolds through a series of successive transformations. Through the poetry of his words and music, Walid Ben Selim opens up new thresholds of perception, whilst Nadia Lauro’s set design weaves a space conducive to metamorphoses and resonances. Nourished by the underground traditions of Amazigh culture, Flaming Creatures unfolds a living memory, where dance and music become forces of manifestation. Gestures emerge, laden with flashes of memory; ancient songs surface. Narratives circulate between bodies, voices and dances, weaving a vibrant multiplicity from buried material.
• Blending genres and redefining formats, Latifa Laâbissi’s creations bring a multitude of off-stage elements onto the stage, channelling a diversity of figures and voices. The staging of these voices (and of the face as medium for minority status) interweaves with the danced sequences in works such as Self Portrait Camouflage (2006) and Loredreamsong (2010). Made in 2016 in collaboration with set designer Nadia Lauro, Pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse evoked visions, landscapes, and images that blend excess, monstrosity, beauty, chance, comedy, and fear. In 2018 she created the performance Consul et Meshie with Antonia Baehr. She has previously performed at Kaaitheater in, among others, Adieu & Merci (2022), La Nuit tombe quand elle veut (2023) with Marcelo Evelin, and Cavaliers impurs (2024) with Antonia Baehr (with set design by Nadia Lauro).
• Walid Ben Selim, humanist singer and versatile composer, lover of poetry (to which he dedicates his artistic career), was born in Casablanca, in the old medina. At the age of 6, he began attending the Casablanca Conservatory before making a name for himself in rap music, in which he became one of the founders of the "Nayda" movement. In 2010, Walid was recognized by the Gowri Art Institute in India with his first creative residency, where he rediscovered Arabic poetry. Back in France, he laid the foundation for the sound identity of N3rdistan, which would be selected as Inouï de Printemps de Bourges two years later and receive the Visa For Music 2015 award. After more than 300 concerts with N3rdistan (at Jazz sous les pommiers, Oslo World Festival, L'Boulevard, Journées Musicales de Carthage, Beau Regard, Les Déferlantes, Liverpool World Festival, Montreal Arab Festival, etc.), in 2018 Walid composed the music for the Moroccan feature film Une urgence ordinaire, by Mohcine Besri. He was asked to create the Oratorio Le lanceur de dés (The Dice Thrower) based on the work of Mahmoud Darwish, a piece mixing theatre and music that he wrote and directed for the opera’s musicians.
concept and performance Latifa Laâbissi | musical creation and singing Walid Ben Selim | concept and visual installation realisation Nadia Lauro | dramaturgy Enkidu Khaled | light design Yves Godin | sound dramaturgy Manuel Coursin | stage management Ludovic Rivière | production Production / Figure | project Fanny Virelizier & Alice Le Diouron | distribution Fanny Virelizier| administration Alice Le Diouron | co-production (in progress) Le TNB - Centre européen théâtral et chorégraphique, Rennes Festival d’Automne, Paris VIADANSE, Centre chorégraphique national de Bourgogne Montpellier Danse CNDC, Angers Next Festival / Buda, Courtrai KAAITHEATER, Bruxelles Latitude Contemporaine, Lille | with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels | support Figure Project is supported by the French Ministry of Culture – DRAC Brittany, the region Brittany, the department of Ille-et-Vilaine and the City of Rennes. Latifa Laâbissi is Artiste associée at the Le TNB - Centre européen théâtral et chorégraphique, Rennes since 2021
