Choreography and staging: Selim Ben Safia — Scenography: Nadia Kaabi-Linke

Labes, in Arabic, means “everything is fine.” In this piece for four dancers and a musician, choreographer Selim Ben Safia and conceptual artist Nadia Kaabi-Linke explore the antagonistic notions of standstill and resilience. To the sound of a viola da gamba, beyond ruins and denial, an ode to the dance of life.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke conceived the scenography based on her research into the Maghrebian Quarter of Jerusalem, destroyed in 1967. Evoking in its shadows the memory of this vanished neighborhood, the stage becomes a haunted space – a scene of dance and live music, as robust as it is luminous in its fragility. Transparent walls rise upon the stage like specters. This installation, shaped by notions of haunting and disappearance, fed into the choreographic approach and opened a poetic and political space. Carried by values powerful in their simplicity and commitment – the strength of vulnerability, the virtue of the collective, and art as a possible space for repair – Selim Ben Safia dares a true dance of joy.
On stage, five artists from different origins and aesthetic affinities – breakdance, circus, contemporary dance, traditional dance – become both performers and transmitters of this unwavering confidence in the founding benevolence of human connections. Traversed by the energy of Palestinian dakbé and traditional Tunisian rhythms, funeral chants and the universal accents of the viola da gamba, the bodies probe the tension between what freezes, buries itself or cements around us, and the vital impulse that continues to pulse within. A choreographic gesture of resilience.