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Compagnie Hervé KOUBI
FRANCE / ALGERIA
What the day owes to the night (Ce que le jour doit à la nuit) (2018)
CONTEMPORARY DANCE
November 12–15, 2020 Watch Together/Chat After: Saturday, November 14, 2020 • 5:00 pm Pacific Running time: 70 minutes • Format: Full HD video
Photo: Véronique Chochon
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Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
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A Message from the Creator, Hervé Koubi “Like a 19th century orientalist who came to Algeria to bring his Eastern dreams to life, I would like to bring to life my dreams of a child born in France who only discovered his true origins later on.” – HERVÉ KOUBI When I was young, before I discovered the Art of Dance and became fully devoted to it, I was fascinated by drawing. Today I keep this same preoccupation in what I call, in my work, my taste for the construction of the gesture and its setting in space. Where I leave, where I am going, what will be my path … I probably kept this unspeakable taste to leave the trace of the artistic gesture coupled with a concern that heart, the relationship to time. To create the choreographic material by defining the frameworks of an issue where space and time would be the tools, where the danced movement would be the thread, where the choreographic construction would be an entanglement, the better the complex weaving leading to a work comparable to that of a lace: a score. My milestones are thus posed for this transposition, better still this dematerialization of this object called art, into a movement danced by definition ephemeral. A dematerialization which in a paradoxical way gives all the material to the dance. For this work I would like to rely on an historical element in order to find the frames that will inspire the forms, the gestures and then the choreographic phrases, that of one of the supposed origins of lace, coming from the Orient and connected to embroidery. Algeria is not the Orient and yet it is the land of this great artistic and literary current called Orientalism. So it is such a 19th century orientalist who came to Algeria to give life to his dreams of the Orient that I would like to give life to my dreams as a child born in France and who only discovered its true origins and those of his two parents, ethnic Algerians. What the day owes to the night — novel by Yasmina Khadra, Director of the Algerian Cultural Center in Paris — is at that moment and at the same place where my parents left everything as they say. Going on the quest of this day to give it strength and form as one goes in search of the Truth or more exactly, of a truth. Lace is above all by definition a way of creating the “day”, the day in a fabric, the day in the material …
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Photo: Véronique Chochon
… the day in my history and why not, without appearing too ambitious and even less pretentious, in history. It constitutes an ideal “pretext”, a marvelous transposition of my paths and those traversed by each of the dancers encountered in Algeria, as so many threads mingling and intertwining, so many links also unite us in a history and a geography, that of the great Mediterranean basin. To celebrate the lace in its refinement, its beauty while attaching itself to a work of memory. This project is at the crossroads of two preoccupations: my taste for the construction and the danced composition and a deep need to bring me closer to my origins in the land of Algeria. Links to be found, others to be renewed and still others to be built.
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About the Work What the day owes to the night (Ce que le jour doit à la nuit) Premiere: January, 2013, Aix-en-Provence/France Choreographer: Hervé Koubi Choreographic assistants: Guillaume Gabriel, Fayçal Hamlat Original score: Maxime Bodson Music: Hamza El Din with Kronos Quartet, Jean-Sébastien Bach, Sufi music Arrangements: Guillaume Gabriel Lighting: Lionel Buzonie Costumes: Guillaume Gabriel Dancers: Adil Bousbara, Mohammed Elhilali, Abdelghani Ferradji, Zakaria Nail Ghezal, Oualid Guennoun, Bendehiba Maamar, Giovanni Martinat, Nadjib Meherhera, Riad Mendejl, Mourad Messaoud, Houssni Mijem, Ismail Oubbajaddi, Issa Sanou, El Houssaini Zahid French-based Compagnie Hervé KOUBI performs What the day owes to the night, a highly physical, stunningly fluid work for thirteen French-Algerian and African dancers. Choreographer Hervé Koubi was inspired by his father’s deathbed revelation that Koubi’s family originated in Algeria, rather than in France as Koubi had believed. Exploring the artist’s newfound roots, this spellbinding work combines capoeira, martial arts, hip hop, and contemporary dance with powerful imagery evocative of Orientalist paintings—depictions of the Eastern world by European artists—and Islamic architecture. Though thrillingly kinetic, what lingers about the piece is the transcendence of a journey home. In 2009, Hervé Koubi held auditions in Algiers, taking the first step in a creation process that would culminate in 2013 with the premiere of What the day owes to the night.
coming mostly from the world of street dance and hip-hop, have provided the necessary effort to bring this long-term project to its conclusion. Influenced by Orientalist paintings and the stone lace found in Islamic architecture, Hervé Koubi traces his own path, a path carved out of entanglements and a complex weave. Lace and its intricate designs have always been a source of fascination for Koubi, who sees them first as “a way to create a day, a day rendered in textiles, in matter… in my own history…” What the day owes to the night is, as its title implies, a disruption in time and a story about links.
PRODUCING PARTNERS AND FUNDERS
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Coproductions : Ballet de l’Opéra National du Rhin - Centre Chorégraphique National / Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil et du Val de Marne – Cie Kafig / Palais des congrès de Loudéac / Centre Culturel de Vitré / Ballet Preljocaj – Centre Chorégraphique National d’Aix en Provence / Ballet Biarritz – Thierry Malandain – Centre Chorégraphique National. With the support of the ‘conservatoire de Musique et de Danse de Brive-la-Gaillarde’, of ‘la Ville d’Uzerche, of ‘la Ville d’Ussac’, from ‘l’Ecole Supérieure de Danse de Cannes’, from ‘Théâtre de Cusset’, from ‘Channel – Scène Nationale de Calais’, from the ‘Centre Culture Jean-Pierre Fabrègue de Saint-Yrieix-LaPerche’, from the ‘Théâtre du Cloître de Bellac’, from the ‘Domaine Départemental de l’étang des Aulnes – Conseil Général des Bouches du Rhône Centre départemental de créations en résidence’. The creation ‘Ce que le jour doit à la nuit’ is labelled ‘Marseille Provence 2013’.
Photo: Véronique Chochon
Inspired by the young hero in Yasmina Khadra’s novel of the same name — an ordinary boy shuffled from one family to the next — Hervé Koubi ventures into his own history, following a path that eventually leads to History, with a big H. “It is as if an Orientalist of the 19th century came to Algeria to give life to his dreams of the Orient; I would like to give life to my dreams as a child born in France who discovered belatedly his true origins and those of his parents, Algerians from birth.” Through meetings and custom work developed partially under the El Din initiative, the 13 Algerian and Burkinabé performers,
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Photo: David Vinco
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What is in a name? My dancers come from Algeria, Morocco, and Burkina Faso. I also have a dancer from France, his name is Giovanni. I have a dancer from Italy and recently one has joined from Israel and one from Palestine. They are all street dancers.
spoke one language; it was not French but Arabic. Here is your great-grandfather.” It was a shock for me. I was not from France, but from Africa. My first name is Hervé, a Celtic name. I am very proud of this first name.
I was born in Cannes and, until I was twenty-five, I ignored that Algeria was the country of my origin. I believed for a long time that my ancestors had come from France. My first name, Hervé, is a bit like François, Jacques… to me, it is such a French name! But it is the name my parents gave me.
I am very proud of my family name too: Koubi, an Arabic name. My mother is Muslim, my father is Jewish. But this is also a chance to remember that for centuries, in North Africa, Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived together in peace. My origins are Algerian, and yet I have white skin. This is true for a large majority of North African people. This is because my ancestors are called Barbarians, barbarians in history, coming from Europe, fleeing war more often than seeking it.
But Koubi…where does the name come from? I did not know my grandparents because they all died before I was born, and my own father was growing older each day. It was getting necessary and urgent for me to ask him where my ancestors come from. My father is a man of few words. Still so, on the day I asked. But he did something. He simply showed me a picture-an old, yellow and torn picture. It depicted an old man, dressed in traditional Arabic style. My father said only this: “This man only
It does not matter if you come from France, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia, Spain, or even America. I am deeply convinced that we have a belonging that is much older than the nations. History repeats itself. It repeats again and again. I dare to hope that it is up to us that one day, we will prove it otherwise. – Hervé Koubi
HERVÉ KOUBI (ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & CHOREOGRAPHER) Of Algerian roots, Hervé Koubi grew up in France where he studied biology and dance at the University of Aix-enProvence before graduating as a Pharmaceutical Doctor in 2002. After deciding to concentrate on a dancing career and graduating from the Rosella Hightower School of Dance in Cannes, Koubi gained professional experience as a dancer before creating his first project entitled “Le Golem” and collaborating with Guillaume Gabriel for all his works and more recently also with Fayçal Hamlat. Since 2010, he has been working with a group of 12 to 14 all male street dancers from North Africa on several works including “What the Day
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Owes to The Night”, “The Barbarian Nights or The First Dawns of the World” and “Boys Don’t Cry” (October 2018). More recently, he has been Associate Choreographer at the Pole National Supérieur de Danse in France and has been awarded the French medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in July 2015.
TOURING MANAGEMENT For booking in North America Bernard Schmidt Productions, Inc.
Photo: Didier Philispart
Tel: 1-212-564 4443 | bschmidtpd@aol.com | www.bernardschmidtproductions.com
The company’s past four seasons of extensive touring included a total of about 65 performances annually in both Europe and all over North America, from Hawaii to Ottawa via New York’s Joyce Theater as a result of its US debut at City Center Theater’s Fall For Dance festival in October 2015. Photo: Olivier Souli
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