The creation was developed in partnership with the Province of Hainaut.
“It is our body that produces sound, and our physiology that creates time,” said Stockhausen, defending the essential place of the body in music at a time when contemporary musical revolutions seem to erase its role as a vehicle of emotion. Instruments themselves can be seen as extensions of the human body, and particularly of the voice; this is undoubtedly why their anthropomorphic nature runs throughout the entire history of instrument making.
“Al Jassad” seeks to make tangible the essential, radical, and multifaceted involvement of the body in music. It is an invitation to enter into music and dance, to the rhythm of voices, texts, and audiovisual elements. The work takes us on a journey through tarab and Sufi music, as well as traditional music and the dabke dance. Identity and otherness, the human and the virtual, the individual and the collective—all run through this contemporary creation, calling for a return, after centuries of obscuration, to the truly sonic, musical, and gestural dimension of the human body.
Tournai
Cathedral of Tournai
