"Short films have always interested me… What I like is that ability to tell stories in a very short time, erase what is superfluous, get to the heart of the matter… and seek an effect of surprise. For the time being, these are ideas that nurture my research, small stories in the form of sketches a little like these short films. Seek, find and tell in a very short time things buried deep inside me and in each of us… Awaken memories, words and aches, hear, hear yourself, spread out… When I was a child, I spent my time observing butterflies and my dream was to fly like them one day. I spent my time catching them one by one and gathering on my fingers the dust given off by their wings. I built myself cardboard wings with three bits of string and placed on them that magic powder which, for me, was the key that would help me fly… But I never did. Take voice and take one’s share of dreams in movement, dance on three small notes with that energy that is so unique to us while speaking of more or less serious things but in a non-serious way”. (Kader Attou)

For Petiteshistoires.com, Kader Attou imagines a show made up of small pieces. Some recount stories while others remain more abstract. The sketches evoke burlesque cinema, while small touches of humour rhythm the choreographic flights of fancy in a free, airy and poetic manner unfettered by codes. 

The things of life just like topicality have always been themes in Kader Attou’s work. Moving from one story to another, jumping from subject to subject, mixing performance, emotion and musicality in a rather burlesque show: that is the challenge.

Kader Attou is a dancer and choreographer from the company Accrorap. Athina, in 1994, marked the beginnings of the company set up with Mourad Merzouki, Eric Mezino and Chaouki Saïd, in Lyon. This show is a success that manages to transpose hip hop dance from the streets to the stage. Alone, he then created Prière pour un fou (1999) to renew the dialogue that the Algerian tragedy made improbable.
Douar (2004), conceived within the framework of the year of Algeria in France, questions the problems of the exile of young people from the districts of France and Algeria. Petites histoire.com (2008) recounts popular France based on burlesque sketches. In 2008, Kader Attou was appointed director of the National Choreographic Center of La Rochelle, thus becoming the first hip hop choreographer to head an institution. In 2018, he reunited with his early partner, Mourad Merzouki, with whom he created Danser Casa for the Montpellier Danse Festival. In 2019, he resumed a version for the street of The Roots with the dancers of the N.I.D. Epsedanse by Anne-Marie Porras for the Montpellier Dance Festival. Since 2022, he has settled in the Friche la Belle de Mai in Marseille.

Source: Montpellier danse