The dance and choreographic creations of Kader Attou are particularly characterised by a poetry in which the expression of feelings is central. A committed choreographer, one of his signature traits is the imaging dimension of the music that conveys emotion. Since the age of twenty, Kader Attou has been inspired by the Symphony no. 3 called “the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”, Symfonia Piesni Zalosnych by Henryk Mikolaj Górecki. The version recorded by the soprano Dawn Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, conducted by David Zinman, is the base of this new work. For the first time, he focuses here on the totality of a musical work. This new creation explores all of its compositional and sensitive aspects, lets itself be carried away by the voice and penetrated by the melodic strength, before uniting in the message of hope. Kader Attou lives his identity as a dancer and choreographer like the imaginary and creative island between two shores. His intimate questioning of origins, racial mixing and otherness establishes a vision and a choreographic universe open onto the world, other cultures and other dances. In the friction of the asperities of each dancer, the attention paid to the other builds a community of bodies where emotion and meaning erupt, a humanist offering of dance. Over and beyond styles, the danced gesture is preserved like a precious gift, a reflection of the richness of humanity, without seeking the uniformisation of the bodies in movement. The danced search is based on the uniqueness of each dancer and the recognition of the similarities, kinships of the gestures and energies of the dancing community. And the sincerity of this dialectic of differences resounds in each of us.

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