Body Revolution (2015)

Installation on view permanently during the entire festival.
At specific times, the installation becomes the set of a performance.

Theatre director Mokhallad Rasem asks his Belgian colleagues (directors and performers) with Moroccan, Tunisian, Iraqi … (Arabic) roots what kind of impact the media images of the Arab Spring have had on them. How does that feel? How do you deal with all the information you receive as an expatriate from your family and friends still living there? How does the information affect your body? How does your body react to the violence and anxiety?

Together with four performers from the Arabic world, Mokhallad Rasem looks for an answer to these questions in dance. Body Revolution is a guerrilla version of the performance: made within a short period of time for a limited audience.

Mokhallad Rasem is an Iraqi theatre-maker and director based in Belgium. He won the prestigious Young Director’s Award for his adaptation of the Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet at the Toneelhuis Antwerp. Presently his work focuses on the current situation in his homeland Iraq, while previously (in Iraq) he focussed on making contemporary adaptations of classic theatre productions by the likes of Camus and Shakespeare. He’s not only known in Belgium for his own productions but also for his work at Monty, which is his collaboration with the American theatre group Sponsored by Nobody that toured a wide range of theatres across Belgium and the Netherlands. Rasem studied in Baghdad at both the Conservatorium and the Academy of Fine Arts.