correria/agwa Compagnie Käfig written by Philip Szporer
Direct from the crowded mean streets of the French city of Lyon to the concert halls of North America, Compagnie Käfig, established in 1996, first captured the beat of that metropolis’ tumultuous bustle and its pulsing soul. Ever since, the company has been heating up concert stages on both sides of the Atlantic. The celebrated group’s rare blend of hip-hop, concert dance, circus, and martial arts, are mixed with the nuances of French, North African and Andalusian Spanish elements to create a distinct signature. The circular energies and a softer sense of angular and rhythmic punctuation create a new brand of entertaining stylized choreography and stage invention. Compagnie Käfig took the language of “born in the U.S.A.” hip-hop and gave it a particular French twist. Typical hip-hop moves – breaking, pop-andlock, on-toe spinning, head-and-back spins, moonwalk, rubber-jointed acrobatics, top-rocking footwork, and jerky movements of the arms – revitalized
Mourad Merzouki
memories of the American-born break dance era of the 1980s. Matched with a sinuous movement quality, accents of classical violin-playing, Andalusian guitar and voice boxes (attached to the dancers’ heads), and featuring an ingenious use of lights and decor, the result was a European path-breaking spin on an American import. At the start, the group consisted of young hip-hop dancers, mainly of Algerian and North African descent. Mourad Merzouki, the company’s artistic director, once said the impulse to form Compagnie Käfig was to bring people together and forget their differences. “It is very hard to be accepted in France if you are from another race. But in our case when we perform everybody comes, blacks, whites, young and old, Arabs or Asians, and they all enjoy together,” he commented. In music circles, an early hip-hop artist like the mighty Grandmaster Flash used his verbal fury to critique America’s urban decay and drug-infested communities and fuel the crowd’s political and social sensibilities. The music represented “a turn to speak” (“la prise de parole”, in French), with artists saying things others wouldn’t about racism, class and family life. After American break dancing groups toured France in the early 1980s with their b-boy cultural onslaught – rap, break and graffiti art
– the popularity of the form grew in that country. In short order, hometown rappers endeared themselves to audiences and forged ahead with their own compositions. Social exclusion is one of the motivating factors in the rise of French hip-hop. Far outside the French establishment, many of the impoverished African and Arab minorities live concentrated in the “banlieues” (the suburbs) that encircle French cities, growing up in “les cités” (otherwise known as housing projects), in dilapidated zones of high-rises, with sub-standard schooling and high unemployment (often identified with living conditions in America’s inner-city ghettos). Facing the harsh social conditions head-on in their work has catapulted hip-hop artists to be recognized as the voice of a generation. In a social democracy like France, expressing the rage and alienation of life in an era of welfare retrenchment and rising anti-immigrant sentiment, the dancer becomes a kind of modern urban warrior, using the aggressive energy of his/her circumstance to, in essence, dance with the “enemy”. Groups like Compagnie Käfig are embracing the complexity of culture, and showcasing the potential that exists within their ranks. Rebelling against mainstream culture, struggling to carve a space and identity for themselves
A MOVEMENTUM PUBLICATION © Irvine Barclay Theatre and Philip Szporer
2014-2015