Christophe Van Molle (°1976)

Christophe Van Molle (°1976)

Hush Hush Hush

2Pack

The new production, 2Pack

Abdelaziz Sarrokh and Tupac Amaru Shakur would have been the same age now. They had a lot in common. They both grew up as members of an ethnic minority in a western society that was not very approachable. And they were both highly talented. But one of them got cut off somewhere along the way.

That body is the bearer, the conductor of those currents of energy. They race through the body in all directions, intensify one another, clash or cancel one another out, resulting in high voltage or a short circuit.

The body is a witness of emotions, and it is this that fascinates Abdelaziz Sarrokh. Not the virtuoso highlights or the lovely poses the body can achieve, not artificial energy and images, but energy and images that reflect the soul. This is what interests him more than anything else; the confrontations, the clashes and the misunderstandings, the symbiosis of all those bodies with all the memories they carry within them, and with their different forms of expression. This is the very foundation of Hush Hush Hush.

Emotions are expressed in small anecdotes. The energy they create is picked up by dance movements that lead an independent life in form. Emotion, energy and movement all fit together like the links of a chain.

The form in which everything finally falls into place (or not!) is as mixed as the content itself. Some passages are as rigorously constructed as a smooth MTV show, while elsewhere improvisation gives the precise interpretation of the moment: flamenco, contemporary dance, B-boy or break; each in its own language as well as in a little of the other’s. A tower of Babel, or simply an ordinary street in an ordinary city.
The figure of Tupac Amaru Shakur was the initial inspiration, the source of all ideas, and the basis for the new production.

But the production is about all the participants, about what moves them or whatever they wish to express. About what exclusion, frustration, struggle for life, boredom, loneliness, friendship, eroticism or beauty arouses in them.

For some this is the first theatre production they have ever been in and their first experience of being part of a group. The trained dancers who have had a certain amount of experience are eager to learn breakdance, to learn another language, while one of the breakers would like to learn a bit of flamenco from Magdalena Przybylek. Tolerance and feelings of curiosity about others are of course necessary in order to function within such a diverse group. Very often dancers do not speak one another’s verbal language, but then their languages of dance are also very different. Misunderstandings are welcome.