Fouad Boussouf
Fouad Boussouf describes dance as momentum and movement. It’s a definition that also characterises his own career, made up of an inquisitive mind and a constant desire to escape. Her early years in Morocco, in an isolated village in the Moulay Idriss region, marked her imagination with family celebrations and a natural environment of monastic simplicity. When his family moved to Romilly-sur-Seine, near Troyes, in France at the age of seven, he discovered a new world, whose culture and codes he learned at school. As a teenager, he was introduced to hip hop, learning from the tapes of Prince and Michael Jackson. What started out as a socially valued way for him to expend his physical energy soon became a path to real personal development, where surpassing himself through his body also brought him recognition from his peers.
Completing his schooling in Chalons-en-Champagne, he took the opportunity to attend workshops run by circus students at the CNAC (Centre national des arts du cirque). He moved to Paris in 2000 and began a degree in social sciences at the University of Paris XII Créteil, while at the same time teaching street dance, first informally and then as a lecturer. At the same time, he continued his training at the Cité Véron Academy, took part in auditions for the Suresnes Cités Danse festival and performed with Farid Berki and Pierre Doussaint. After completing a post-graduate diploma in hip hop dance, he set off on a seven-month road trip to Australia, the start of a cycle combining travel and teaching that would also take him to Egypt and Russia. On his return, determined to devote himself fully to dance, he founded the Massala company at the age of 27. In 2008-2009 he created solos and trios, and in 2010 his first group piece, Déviations.
Since then, Fouad Boussouf’s career has been shaped by the urgency of a constantly renewed creative drive. Hybrid, unconcerned with etiquette and firmly rooted in the present, his dance puts hip hop vocabulary at the service of his various projects. Over the years, he has developed a style based on spontaneous gesture and continuous movement that never starts and never stops. Driven by this dynamic that moves them beyond their usual gestures, the performers generate an irresistible cyclical energy on stage. The success of Näss (Les Gens) in 2018, followed by Oüm (2020), a tribute to Oum Kalthoum, have established the choreographer on the international stage.
While the body remains his preferred tool, he also draws on other artistic expressions, particularly video and the visual arts – whether contemporary or linked to the history of the Mediterranean world. This is demonstrated by his documentary films, Le Ballet Urbain (2019), and his collaborations with the sculptor Ugo Rondinone, for the video installation Burn to shine (2022) at the Petit Palais in Paris and for the piece Vïa (2023) with the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, commissioned by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. For this ‘citizen of the world’, creation imposes a rhythm guided by emotion, a taste for risk and a constant desire to move forward.
In 2020-22, Fouad Boussouf was an associate artist at the Maison de la danse de Lyon, Équinoxe – Scène nationale de Châteauroux and the Maison de la musique de Nanterre. Unanimously chosen to direct the Phare – Centre chorégraphique national du Havre Normandie from 1 January 2022, he was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2022.
– Isabelle Calabre
Source : Le Phare website
