A multi-ethnic field of forces
Heddy Maalem was born in Batna, in the Algerian region of the Aurès Mountains, where the struggle for the country's independence began. Moving to France at a young age, he had no intention of becoming a dancer but rather a boxer or practitioner of Aikido, until he discovered quite by chance that he felt the need to dance. With patience and determination, he managed to work on his body starting from the two disciplines he knew best, and on the physicality typical of African dances without resorting to traditional folklore patterns. By 1990, he was able to teach others what he had experienced himself: he founded his own company in Toulouse, a city in the richly endowed southern region of France with centers, festivals, and groups, earning acclaim from audiences and critics alike for works such as Transport Phenomena (1991), Corridors (1992), and Trois Vues sur la Douce Paresse (1994) – his early creations noted for their honesty and semantic clarity. This was further affirmed in his solo piece Un Petit Moment de Faiblesse (1997) and in Beau Milieu, presented at the Avignon Off Festival.
Following K.O.Debout in 1999, where he felt the need to purify his sometimes fiery and aggressive dance and protect it from the intrusive images of the world, Black Spring (2000) led Maalem straight into the arms of documentary filmmaker Benoît Dervaux, fascinated by the idea of capturing a corporeal explosion on the theme of identity portrayed by Senegalese and Nigerian dancers. With Petite Logique des Forces, three solos created for the Aix-en-Provence Dance Festival, Maalem began exploring the concept of a "field of forces," an idea that after L'Ordre de la Bataille (2002) and especially the audacious Rite of Spring (for 14 African dancers), inspired him to create Un Champ de Forces at the end of 2005. The piece is intensely international, bringing together dancers from Senegal, France, Japan, Spain, the Netherlands, South Korea, but above all reflecting on the urgency to slow down the rush "towards nothingness" – as the choreographer himself asserts – that characterizes humanity in our time.
The issue of ethnic identity, cultural difference, and the resulting racial and religious discrimination, always dear to Maalem, expands into an exploration of the incomprehensible drift that seems to engulf all forces in play in old Europe. No longer the center of the world, Europe, according to Maalem, is a global village inhabited by diverse peoples who do not meet, who ignore each other in a sort of prolonged night, a wild Eden that is anything but paradise, where every ethnicity seems destined for annihilation. What else can one do but attempt to delicately work, without hatred or prejudice, on encountering the "other," and strive to contemplate the world-ground before its complete destruction?
Disenchanted yet affectionate, Maalem's gaze – utilizing Samuel Dravet's imagery and Hélène Sage's original soundtrack here – seeks solace in a poetry of movement that highlights the human figure beyond skin color, sexual difference, and ethnic identity. But there is always so much passion and vitality in his "field of forces": salvation lies in not succumbing to the enchantment and superficial truth of false movements.
