Ni Ni Ya Mo Mo

“I don’t speak Moroccan Arabic, I always thought that “muilela” was my grandmother’s name, when in fact it means “grandmother” in Moroccan Arabic. I have an unstable, ambiguous and uncomfortable relationship with my Moroccan origins. I am French, born to a French mother and a Moroccan father. My father felt compelled to meet the criteria for French identity, to prove himself. He did everything he could to make his children feel French. My name is Guilhem, my brother’s name is Florent. Our real surname is el Chater, which was Frenchified to Chatir.”

Ni Ni Ya Mo Mo addresses the broad issue of the complexity of heritage: the buried traces it leaves behind, the responsibility we have and the freedom we take with regard to this legacy that does not quite belong to us.

Starting from a very precious and intimate memory, the lullaby his father sang to him when he was a child, ‘Ni ni ya mo mo’, Guilhem Chatir, together with his partners Bilal El Had and Karima El Amrani, explore this unexplored part of his heritage that has never ceased to fuel his dreams and fantasies. Almost a Freudian slip on the part of his father who thought he had smoothed everything over to facilitate his son’s integration.

Under the cover of night, which allows for unusual connections, the paradoxical awakening of dormant memories, and the physical enjoyment of uninhibited celebrations, the performers will deploy physical material in perpetual transformation: dances inspired by the complex richness of origins and by memories that reveal themselves and then disappear, evoke, and then burn out endlessly.

David Laborgne

David Laborgne