For Khalid Benghrib, discovering dance was also a discovery of knowledge and understanding, and he has continually explored movement through creation, teaching and research—always with the aim of sharing human experience. Urban Gnawa Project is part of this unique approach, in which trance becomes a moment of collective momentum “where the body becomes a passageway between the individual and the collective.”
His own Gnawa family heritage, inscribed in both body and mind, has nourished his choreographic language ever since he immersed himself in the depths of the ritual process and came to understand the fundamentally human dimension of Gnawa music and dance. Drawing on “thirty years of lived experience” and enriched by his research into the living memory of gesture, he allows himself to move from the elemental intensity of Gnawa dance into contemporary choreography.
He opens this introspective approach to others—as guide, facilitator, and support—so that each participant may find their own breath. From the protocol of trance and its formal, theatricalised rituals, he leads the non-professional dancers towards a monumental trance, set to music performed by a Gnawa master and his ensemble, combined with electronic compositions by Max Frimout.
