Saïdo Lehlouh

“The need to remind others of the need for their presence”: this theme is woven into the fabric of Saïdo Lehlouh’s career as a dancer and choreographer. Focused from the outset on the concept of group, he made his mark in the history of breakin in the 2000s as a member of Bad Trip Crew. The project “Darwin” has explored this “French touch” in breakdancing, akin to feline fluidity, and exported it outside the field of competition with Wild Cat in 2014. Lehlouh has drawn on this first choreographic solo to draft a technical and aesthetic manifesto, outlining his singular approach to the dance floor. He thus laid the groundwork for a choreographic gesture entirely focused on sincerity and sensory relations through movement.

Since 2019, Apaches, conceived as a spin-off from his first show, has been shaping a collective performance which, varying in size, traces, from the stage to the public space, the intersections between amateur and professional performers with strong identities, navigating between their shared intimacy and their commitment to the present moment. Starting with this guiding principle, the choreographer builds a veritable protocol for danced encounters and formal research, which is brought to the stage in 2024 in a tighter, newly redesigned version: Témoin.

His attention turned to otherness; Lehlouh created the Black Sheep Company with Johanna Faye. The two joined forces to write Iskio in 2015, followed by Fact in 2017 and, most recently, Earthbound in 2021. That last piece brings together live music and a community of performers with a wide range of influences in an effort to explore the relationships between sound, rhythms specific to each individual, and the dancers’ ability to interact as part of an ensemble. By foregrounding self-taught protagonists; questioning the boundaries between stage and audience, on and off stage; and paying particular attention to the great diversity of backgrounds, the choreographer aims to open up spaces as an invitation to a dialogue.

Saïdo Lehlouh is a member of Collectif FAIR-E, co-director of CCNRB, associate artist at Théâtre de la Ville-Paris.