Mourad Merzouki, guest star of Montpellier Danse: “Get back to basics, to the body and to the party!”

Choreographer Mourad Merzouki is invited for the 24th time by Montpellier Danse: truly exceptional fidelity, and a consistently won over audience. Julie Cherki

An essential figure in hip-hop dance since the 1990s, Mourad Merzouki is invited for the 24th time to Montpellier Danse! He gives a sold-out performance from February 13 to 16 at the Berlioz opera, "Zéphyr", his latest creation, a melee with the wind for ten dancers. He will return in June for a residency at Scène de Bayssan, in Béziers, where he will give "Beauséjour" on June 29. But that's not all: he is also very involved in the Olympic Games!

After confronting your dance with the virtual, with verticality, with the baroque, you put it with "Zéphyr" facing the wind!

Exactly. It's linked to the Vendée Globes, the sailing race, around the world, solo and without stopover or assistance. I was asked to imagine a show that would echo this exceptional event. I accepted because I saw it as a way of linking sport, dance, the world of the sea…

Isn't this the common point of all your creations to seek to dialogue with other forms ?

Yes, it’s even an almost founding principle. I have always been keen to renew myself in my creations, to offer something different each time. And the best way to avoid repetition is to get out of your comfort zone and venture into worlds that you don't yet know!< /p>

By summoning the wind to the plateau, it is of course also the sea, its imagination, its reality, which invites itself!< /p>

Of course, I was inspired by the marine environment, the scenography resembles a boat hull, we also find the image of sailing… However, I like that the spectator  can make his own story, allow himself to let himself be carried away, make what I offer him his own without constraint.

This is also a constant in your work: you prefer suggestion to narration…

That's it. Because I think I simply wouldn't know how to do it. I like working on images, paintings… This gives me more freedom, without locking myself into a subject.

Ten dancers on stage in a clinch with the wind to music by Armand Amar. Laurent Philippe

How does music (for the fourth time, signed by Armand Amar) intervene in this process ? 

Yes, Armand Amar is becoming a faithful follower of my work. What's pleasant about him is that his work is very cinematic, and that it enhances the image of dance that the image of dance is. we arouse on the set. In fact, it works back and forth: sometimes the music influences the dance, sometimes the dance suggests the composition.

In addition, he shares with you a taste for all languages ​​and a refusal of borders…

Yes, the principle of Armand Amar's music is to be world music, really, which is inspired by the rest of the world. This is what I find very interesting in his approach.

You will return to Béziers in June for a residency and to present "Beauséjour", in preview before the Nuits de Fourvière. What can you tell us about it ?

This is my next big creation, or at least my next big meeting with the public. It is a piece for fourteen dancers. There will be a lot of people on stage, and that's a real joy for me. With Beauséjour,I will deal with the aging body. I'm 50 now, so I necessarily wonder about how we progress in dance after a certain age. With lightness of course, and a certain shift, I want to offer the viewer something with bodies that are no longer very young.

At the same time, there is the "Dance of Games" that you revealed during the last Telethon…

I have been working for a year and a half on this project which we will find in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. I am extremely happy to be able to offer a dance which, I hope, will be danced by as many people as possible. The idea is through it, to bring dance and sport together, to recall the importance of the body, and to correspond as closely as possible to the spirit of the Olympic Games, this meeting of sharing, of surpassing… 

Concretely how is it prepared ? Via the tutorials on the site generation.paris2024.org  ?

Yes, since the start of the school year in September, it has been learned in schools in France but also abroad. As I speak to you I am in Spain where we have transmitted this dance to teachers in different cities. We feel that Game Dance is starting to go viral, it's great. A real joy for me. It’s such a beautiful way to tell the world the importance of being together, of doing things together, of getting back to basics, to the body and to partying!

You are also the choreographer of the free program for the French artistic swimming team ?

It’s another formidable challenge, which leads me to consider choreography differently. This involves essentially choreographing the upper body, with the swimmers evolving in a 3 m deep pool. It's not an easy exercise but an exciting challenge. We are in the home stretch, it is taking shape. They are great swimmers but also dancers, they are used to working to music and extremely precise movements. My goal is to shake them up, take them elsewhere, into another energy, another way of moving.

This echoes a bit of "Zéphyr", no ?

Yes, in a way. I was saying earlier about dance and sport. There, we come back to this approach that I find interesting, and important: I like the idea of ​​the most porous border possible between dance and sport!

Precisely, the invitation of breaking to the Olympic Games must make you happy!

It’s already recognition for hip-hop dance to be invited to this global event! I also defend the idea that hip-hop dance is both sport and art, contrary to some who would like to oppose the two. When I started dancing, the DNA of hip-hop was competition, two dancers challenging each other and the best one winning. Over the years, hip-hop dance has evolved, it has joined the stage, it has become hybridized, we find it today in the biggest halls in the world… But it seems right to me to share it just as much in terms of sport, demonstration, the spectacular, as in poetry, writing, beauty…

In the end, scanning all this news, it appears clear that 2024 is a great year for you, as an artist as much as a pioneer, as well as committed to the hip-hop!

The more the years pass, the more I realize that there is great interest in my work, my sensitivity, my approach. People come to seek me out for my taste for sharing with the greatest public, for being participatory, but also because I am keen to offer shows which, I hope, reveal a certain requirement, content, originality. So I am obviously very very happy to be asked in these two places: the societal issue and the artistic issue.