from Morocco to Turkey, “inventing our own folklore” – Libération

Ten years after its creation at the Avignon Festival, the French choreographer returns to his hit “D’après une histoire vérité…”, a sublime all-male piece about brotherhood performed by dancers from around the Mediterranean.

It is a popular dance fantasy, an imaginary folk dance, coming from an alternative Mediterranean. Made of reminiscences of traditional movements from Türkiye, Morocco or Israel, it is invented in front of us by a group of men who are trying to celebrate the possibility of a union. In 2013, Based on a true story…, choreography by Christian Rizzo for eight dancers and two drummers, mainly from the Maghreb and the Middle East, was a landmark to the point of touring from Peru to Japan for several years. Inside, barefoot men in jeans, all in long beards and rolled-up shirts, sketch unisons and go out of tune, rush forward hand in hand and diffract to the sound of drums that they don’t always match and a light that sometimes illuminates the void between them. This key piece of the contemporary repertoire has brought in its wake a wave of creations eyeing like it towards trance and the exhumation of ancient gestures, transmitted from generation to generation far from established classes. As the Middle East burns and America celebrates the reign of virilism, this entirely masculine play, about the dream of co