wie ik ben - qui je suis by Abdelmalek Kadi & Meryem Jazouli dance theatre Wie ik ben – Qui je suis, a theatre/dance production by Abdelmalek Kadi (BE) and Meryem Jazouli (MA) based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s autobiography in verse ‘Poeta delle Ceneri’ to the rhythms of Schubert’s Winterreise. Pier Paolo Pasolini is widely considered to have been a highly-gifted artist. His work is inextricably bound up with his life which was a constant battle against slavery in the fullest sense of the word. The driving force behind his work was the struggle for human dignity. Pasolini had an extremely complex personality with many different faces: intellectual polemist, essayist, poet, theatre maker and dramaturge. Through all these artistic activities he constantly questioned society and the spirit of the age. In ‘Poeta delle Ceneri’ – which he wrote in 1966 when he was staying in New York before becoming an international celebrity -, he looks back on his past and on his work and investigates the circumstances which made him a poet. He shows us that the struggle for human dignity is his main motivation for writing and explains why poetry is so vitally important to him. The story gives us a glimpse of the Italy of the time and we see that all in all the world has not changed very much since then. ‘Wie ik ben’ is presented as an interview with Pasolini in a hotel room in New York, far from the writer’s beloved Italy. It is a moving confession in which the poet proves extraordinarily honest about his life and reality and shows amazing insight into the world and how it is organized.
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The seeds of this project were sown in meetings between Abdelmalek Kadi and Meryem Jazouli both at the Moussem Festival in Brussels and at the Contemporary Dance Festival in Marrakech. These meetings between Kadi who is always on the lookout for open-minded people - and Jazouli - who might be described as the embodiment of contemporary dance in Morocco and with her study centre builds bridges over the Mediterranean - made a cooperation almost inevitable. Together the Brussels actor with a predilection for movement and voice and the theatrical dancer from Casablanca set to work on Pasolini’s text, which exudes openness. Kadi and Jazouli invent a new language to communicate, a language drenched in dance and theatre in which movement and word are central and humanity is distilled from the original text. The gesture emphasizes the emotion of the word in the unspeakable. The music is used as demarcation.
Direction, script and acting: Abdelmalek Kadi Dance and choreography: Meryem Jazouli Text: Pier Paolo Pasolini Music: Franz Schubert Produced by: Moussem in cooperation with ARD Casablanca and CC Berchem Première on November 17th 2011, ccBe (Antwerp)