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A Journey of Healing

Across North Africa, the all-night music-dance-trance ritual called lila (pronounced lee-lah) is celebrated as a means for spiritual healing. These night-long ceremonies involving a ritual master, ensemble of musicians, and a party of guests who come to feast, dance, and trance served as inspiration for Ismaël Mouaraki’s work “Le Sacre de Lila.” The work received its US premiere at the end of September at the Hudson Valley center for contemporary performance, PS21. It will make its way to New York Live Arts in November as part of the Crossing the Line Festival.

Performance

Destins Croisés: “Le Sacre de Lila” by Ismaël Mouaraki

Place

PS21, Chatham, NY, September 29, 2024

Words

Karen Greenspan

Destins Croisés in “Le Sacre de Lila” by Ismaël Mouaraki. Photograph by Sylvie Ann Paré

Mouaraki, a self-taught, French-Moroccan-Canadian dancer and choreographer and a group of male dancers from his Montreal-based company Destins Croisés (Intertwined Destinies) made their own journey to create this choreographic work that draws from the lila tradition. Having been raised in both France and Morocco, Mouaraki, in an interview prior to the performance, recalled his early exposure to dance: 

In Morocco, dance is everywhere. The dance, the music, the joie de vivre is always present. When we would go to Morocco, my family used the lila ceremonies and Gnawa dance to induce trance for healing. This was part of my childhood. Even from the age of five, I participated. I remember imitating the older family members as they danced. This is what dance is for me. Through dance, through food, through sharing energy, we get in touch with the spirits and the healing process takes place. The music and dance of the Gnawa are universal and the healing can be for everyone.

Destins Croisés in “Le Sacre de Lila” by Ismaël Mouaraki. Photograph by Sylvie Ann Paré

Mouaraki waited 20 years before attempting to choreograph a work dealing with such a personal aspect of his life. To make the work, Mouaraki gathered a group of artists, who could help build this concept, deciding to use only male dancers. Numerous esoteric traditions exist within the colorful tapestry of Moroccan culture and are generally practiced in brotherhoods. He explained, “I needed individuals who could share their culture and who could express their sensitivity, sensuality, and masculinity through dance, through contact, and through openness with each other.” 

Mouaraki took the dancers (trained in contemporary and urban dance) to Morocco to create the piece. He said, “I wanted them to experience the smells, the food, the visuals, the people, the air, and a lila. Day by day, the show built itself just by dancing in that environment.”

The show begins as five male dancers sit down on low piles of woven bags in a large circle. A sixth dancer enters the circle carrying a tall staff, plants its chalk tip onto the center point, and slowly draws a spiral filling the circular space. One of the seated dancers, stands and lifts a cloth bag pouring its contents of what looks like blue-colored sand (actually, rice grains) onto the floor design. Eventually, all the men empty their pile of bags filling the stage with a circular spiral of blue.

As the men stand on the periphery of the design, one dives onto the sand and then returns to stand in the circle. Each dancer takes a plunge, until they all dive to the floor together landing in various positions─in essence, to lose themselves in another dimension.

One dancer stands swaying, his arms float heavenward, as others break into urban dance stunts that grow in intensity. Their leaps and single arm handstands send the blue sand flying. In a contrasting layer of quiet, internalized energy, several dancers begin the slow spinning of Sufi whirlers. This new energy initiates an intimate, physically connected mirroring sequence between two dancers─all enveloped in the sound of winds blowing (part of Antoine Berthiaume’s evocative soundscape). 

Destins Croisés in “Le Sacre de Lila” by Ismaël Mouaraki. Photograph by Sylvie Ann Paré

Throughout the hour-long work, the dancers explore a mix of spiritual encounters. Recalling ecstatic states reached through the Sufi dhikr practice (integrating one’s breath with the recitation of the name “Allah”), the dancers’ rhythmic breathing intensifies as they lift off the floor─literally, jumping from their knees. At this point, recorded Gnawa music asserts itself with its contagious rhythms played on the metal qraqab (castanets) and the group forms a jumping, pulsing brotherhood. One dancer descends to the floor and corkscrews around in the sand. The overlay of electronic echoing in the soundtrack suggests that he has entered an altered state. After a period, he returns to the group and is reabsorbed into their connected huddle.

The lila ceremonies originated with the Gnawa, a minority population living in Morocco, who are descendants of people brought forcibly to Morocco from Central and West Africa in the trans-Saharan slave trade. Their music and rituals, rooted in Islamic traditions and pre-Islamic African practices, recall their history of capture and bondage and provide for healing through communing with their pantheon of spirits. The different spirits are identified by their musical leitmotif, energy, color, and incense. These elements, together with rhythmic head and torso movements, help the participant enter a state of healing trance. 

Integrated into the original score, is the Gnawa music, played by a Montreal-based Gnawa ensemble. It leads the choreography through a series of spirit encounters as new themes and rhythms come to the fore. Another dancer takes the floor and loses himself in jumps, kicks, and fouetté turns. The group energy builds with individual stunts leading to competitive acrobatics, and a free-for all. Then the energy recedes as the dancers reunite─breathing together, feeling the rhythm, sensing each other, and reconstituting to begin again.

Destins Croisés in “Le Sacre de Lila” by Ismaël Mouaraki. Photograph by Sylvie Ann Paré

In trance rituals, there is usually a support system to care for the trancers. This too is part of Mouaraki’s choreography. Moments of vulnerability, dependence, and care are enacted in sensual partnering sequences and in the gestures and actions of the group. 

For Mouaraki and his dancers, “Le Sacre de Lila” is a healing journey. Through the choreography, they reinterpret rites and codes of mystical traditions into an expression of openness, vulnerability, and affection between men that is part of Moroccan culture. Mouaraki confided, “In North America, I was missing that feeling without even consciously knowing it.” 

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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