Sheikh Al Tuni/Al Wegdann /La passion dévorante 2008 by Béatrice Grognard

Belgian choreographer and dancer, Béatrice Grognard, surrounded by 7 dancers of her Tarab dance company, and the charismatic Sufi singer Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tûni unite for an artistically audacious performance, as Sheikh Tuni’s repertoire has never before been transposed into female dance drama. Béatrice Grognard’s art is characterized by a flamboyant theatrical expression and danced emotions, sometimes interior, deep and delicate, sometimes powerful and close to trance. Ahmad al-Tûni is one of Egypt’s last great Sufi singers. His voice rises and intensifies, leading to Sufi trance, an ancient ritual for all. Open, creative, expressing a large range of emotional behaviors, Ahmad al-Tûni sings, mimes his poetry with expression ; his nervous body balances to the music and emphasizes the rhythmic fierceness of the dûff, the riqqand the tabla of Egypt. Al-Tûni’s lyrical and voluptuous chanting and Béatrice’s intense and majestic dancing join to celebrate divine and human love, ecstatic joy, desire, sweet or bitter passion, the sufferance of being separated, the fear of absence and the feeling of surrendering of the body. www.tarabofegypt.com