«I do not know enough about the rivers of North Africa. The Nile is usually mentioned, not only because of our sea. However, various waters that struggle to survive in that burning land, in their unusual beds, in the sand or near it, sometimes only in depth, in large underground spaces, sheltered from the sun, are overlooked. I have had the opportunity to follow some that manage to reach the sea: (...) the Cheliff in Algeria, which in the upper part of its course stops until it receives stronger tributaries, between Medea and Mascara.»
Predrag Matvejevic, Breviario Mediterraneo
Nya, an Arabic word that indicates a kind of initiation into life, is a choreographic work from 2010. It is composed for ten male hip hop dancers from the Cellule Contemporaine du Ballet National Algérien, a group that aims to serve as a cultural Mediterranean bridge between France and Algeria, in a primarily three-year training project. Nya consists of a diptych: both parts fully engage the group, although they are strongly dissimilar sections with two different musical memories. The first part is titled Le Boléro de Maurice Ravel and looks at French culture: against a sound backdrop evoking the traffic and chatter of a square, the sounds of a market, perhaps the life of a souk, the ten performers alternate in a dance full of falls and waits, with an attitude of challenge as a premise for the reasons of being together, with a physicality from street dance for bodies that are perhaps less athletic, in which the continuous references to folk dances require extreme flexibility of arms and legs. The scene has a backdrop of a square divided into four square zones, illuminated alternately: the music of the Boléro arrives and spreads through this community of men as if to dictate a grammar of the relationship entirely in movement. The styles embrace and expand very expressive tics and invocations among themselves, in a theatrical abstraction: it seems to celebrate, ultimately, an idea of instability as repeatedly as the main line of the music, almost to flood the bodies with a shared knowledge. The final recomposition of the group occurs simply yet in a sought-after manner: in a quick walk towards a light square, on the edge of a backdrop, that contains them all. Seated. Without anxiety. Without unnecessary haste. Without running. Nor excitement.
The second part, more demanding in terms of duration, is titled Chants d’Houria Aïchi, and primarily focuses on the Algerian soul of the group. A vertical panel of carpets in the center, embroidered on a sky-blue background, opens onto an empty space crossed by a beautiful Algerian song. From the initial solo, as desperate as the accompanying song, to all the other combinations of the nine dancers, first lying on the ground like corpses, as if struggling in immobility with the floor, as if to allude to a difficult, troubled, non-durable verticality; then standing with interdicted, off-axis movements, propelled into a frenetic energy but not free; here, everything seems, above all, a long game with imbalance, with the continuous loss of the body’s central axis, of the weight of the arms. Numerous rhythm changes with even acrobatic turns, never banally set to music, transmit energy from performer to performer as if to create visual relationships rather than preordained dance sequences. Abandonment here approaches hypnosis. The result, amidst so much richness, is a gestural quality that, although simple, is highly sought after in its languid and nervous abstraction, as if to decenter the presences of the dancers in the continuous mobility between representations of strength and virility, as well as beauty and fragility. Identities finally expiated in the sudden baptism of serial jets of water.
Abou Lagraa, born in 1970, trained in Lyon and worked with Rui Horta in Lisbon, and then in 1997 with Robert Poole, Denis Plassard, and Lionel Hoche; a winner of several important awards as a dancer, he founded his company, La Baraka, in 1997, immediately hosted by the Biennale de la Danse de Lyon. He has created numerous choreographies for major companies such as the CCN Ballet de Lorraine and the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers. In 2006, the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris commissioned him to create Le Souffle du Temps, for 21 dancers, including 3 étoiles (Marie-Agnès Gillot, Manuel Legris, Wilfried Romoli). Since 2008, Abou Lagraa and his company La Baraka have been working on the Pont Culturel Méditerranéen project, in collaboration with the Algerian Ministry of Culture: this is a Franco-Algerian cooperation for the development of artistic exchanges to promote dance culture.
