Vancouver shows Q&A: Piece combines capoeira, martial arts, urban and contemporary movement set to classical and traditional compositions.
What the Day Owes to the Night: Compagnie Hervé Koubi
April 7 and 8 at 8 p.m. (Speaking of Dance pre-show talk: 7:15) | Vancouver Playhouse
Tickets: From $35 at dancehouse.ca
After discovering the truth about his Algerian ancestry, French choreographer Hervé Koubi was inspired to visit Algeria, recruit dancers and create a piece.
What the Day Owes to the Night premiered in 2013 and features 12 performers from Algeria and Burkina Faso with backgrounds in street and hip-hop dance. The piece combines capoeira, martial arts, urban and contemporary movement set to compositions by Bach and Vivaldi, traditional Sufi music and music by Nubian composer Hamza El Din (as played by the Kronos Quartet).
We talked to Bernard Schmidt, U.S. tour producer for Compagnie Hervé Koubi, about the performance.
Q: What the Day Owes to the Night first came to North America in January 2015 as a series of showcases for presenters, is that right?
A: Yes. Many presenters came twice or three times. They had never seen anything like it. Part of the showcase included the 12 dancers serving hot sweet tea, like they do in Algeria, as a welcoming gift. So the 12 men, in their costumes, which is bare chest and long white cut-off robes, served tea. That was something unusual for presenters.
Q: You say that the presenters had never seen anything like it. What is distinctive about What the Day Owes to the Night?
A: First, it’s all men. It’s very rare to find, in the dance world, a company made up of only men. Also, the movements that they do are quite spectacular. They also came from north Africa, mostly from Algeria and one from Burkina Faso in West Africa, and to see men doing that with as much artistry, but also authenticity and power, was unseen before.
Q: Was there any kind of culture shock for the dancers, leaving Algiers to live in France and tour the world?
A: Well, none of these dancers had any formal training at a dance school. They learned from each other, from watching videos, from doing it in the streets. So a lifestyle change, I guess so.
From what I heard from Hervé Koubi himself, they live better, and they have a job. Algeria has many young men and many of them do not have a job. Many speak French and look to France to find a job but they cannot leave Algeria — it’s very strictly controlled. And also the touring — they tour about 65 performances in a season, one-third in the last two years in North America, one-third in France and one-third in other countries.
Q: What have you found about reaction to the show as it tours?
A: Same as always. Standing ovations and sold-out theatres. Systematically, there is a minute of silence at the end of the show because people cannot take in what they’ve seen that quickly. They’re so taken by the show, that it’s almost like in a church. They can’t applaud right away.
There’s something about the show, it’s not only a series of pirouettes and flip-flops, it is spectacular in that sense, but there’s also something very humanistic. That is something hard for me to explain in words. It doesn’t come through in video. I do use video link of five minutes to promote the show to other presenters.
There is something that comes through from seeing the performance. The music is also important. When you see the performance, you are immediately taken into another world, which is the Mediterranean world of northern Africa, where it’s very hot in the summer, and there’s a section in the work where they all sit down, and that is to make people think of the sauna.
So the show is also about these aspects of living together as men, as companions. There’s nothing misleading about friendship between two men. Men, for example, hold hands in north Africa commonly in the street — that’s the way they behave in society.
The performance is about all these things together. It’s also about Herve finding his roots. It’s a lot of things together.
