Shabaab - Samar Haddad King

As part of the Faits d'hiver festival, choreographer Samar Haddad King presents Shabaab. Blending dance, theatre and puppet manipulation, she brings to the surface an intimate memory in which friendship becomes a space of survival, tenderness and resistance.

We first discovered Samar Haddad King with Losing it, created with Samaa Wakim; now we find her with Shabaab (youth, in Arabic), which celebrates male friendship.

Steering clear of reductive portrayals centred on strength or confrontation, she allows the beauty and tenderness that can arise between two young men to unfold.

To give them form and depth, where words often fail and reserve prevails, her two performers are doubled by a puppet that voices the emotions denied to their real bodies.

Through this figure, childhood dreams resurface, memories return and time frames blend, letting a possible intimacy surface: a form of bond and affection that continues its underground existence even when the individuals appear to be deprived of it.