“From my school years, I have retained no academic knowledge. Everything I studied has faded. Only one thing remains: dreaming. One of the moments of grace was learning poems by heart, which I experienced as a form of meditation, turning words into mental images.” All of Kallas’s work in SāHO reflects this absence and this state of mental escape.
On stage, this sense of absolute freedom is conjured up using the simplest of elements: a small child’s chair placed on a white carpet; excerpts from poems by the Lebanese writer Mikhail Naimy, translated in her own way into sign language; and her body, whose fragmented, tension-filled movement—caught between collapse and elevation—breaks codes and creates friction. In her own intense, offbeat and playful way, she reinvents those poetry recitations—when her teacher would tell her off for singing and dancing in class.
This deliberately blurred performance plays with disappearance and silence, with contrasts of shadow and light, set to the music of Youssef Hobeich, which blends traditional Middle Eastern percussion with contemporary influences. In this new work, Nivine Kallas retraces the thread of her memory and her daydreams.
Événement organisé dans le cadre de la Saison Méditerranée 2026.
Les représentations à Marseille reçoivent le soutien de lʼInstitut français du Liban.
