Apaches

On the streets of Belle Époque Paris, a group of outlaws comes together. Somewhere between a gang and a subculture, they have a particular enmity towards bourgeois Parisians, whom they threaten, attack and rob. They are the Apaches Parisiens, a name that first appears in a newspaper article and is then adopted by the group. Saïdo Lehlouh has taken these events in turn-of-the-century Paris as the basis for his piece Apaches.

At the grand opening of the festival, the contemporary French hip hop choreographer Saïdo Lehlouh presents the piece in a unique Hannover version. Over the course of a week, he brought together fourteen German and five French representatives of a range of movement-languages, including hip hop, breakdance, house and voguing, in a series of workshops and ‘each one teach one’ events. He combines all these shared experiences with the dancers’ personal styles and choreographic moves to form a quite special, self-contained dance evening.

Authentic solos, powerful duets and group choreographies make it possible to see just how much Saïdo Lehlouh’s aesthetic handwriting is shaped by the power of the collective and his curiosity about new forms of dance. With Apaches, he pays tribute to the non-academic and marginalised dances which for so long were kept off the stage in the theatres of high culture and which to this day have to fight for visibility, resources and recognition. Apaches is all about shared dialogue and networking, celebrating the power of encounter, of the moment and of improvisation.


Saïdo Lehlouh has his roots in street dance. Focussing on the power of community from the very beginning, he made his mark in the history of b-boying/breakdance in the 2000s as a member of Bad Trip Crew. In his choreographies, Saïdo Lehlouh brings self-taught and self-determined protagonists to the fore, by questioning the boundaries between stage and audience he opens up spaces as an invitation to a dialogue. Together with Johanna Faye, he created the Black Sheep Company and is part of the management team of the Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, the collectif FAIR-E.