La Vague Coréenne

Boxing’s a form of dance anyway. I realized that as a teenager, when I got into hip-hop after years of doing martial arts. While one is identified with brutality and violence and the other with grace and pleasure, I found touch of all these ingredients in each of them I’ll be putting these contrasts to work in this new piece, because each aspect of boxing has an equivalent in choreography: the ring and the stage, the gong and the curtain going up, the referee and the eagle-eyed critics – for me there are all kinds of similarities.
Like martial arts, dance demands hard work, sweat, no effort spared; in both the «performer» commits himself and suffers the same encounter with the void in the form of his opponent or the audience. No weaknesses or flaws allowed – he has to satisfy the public. The further I go down my path as a choreographer, the clearer it is that you really have to show your mettle. When fame and recognition are no longer enough, only risk-taking – the face-off, the leap into the unknown, and ultimately your battle with yourself – will keep you going.
So there’s a mix – the excitement of combat and fear of the spectators: the gut fear of getting badly knocked about, of taking a licking, together with that great feeling of abandoning yourself, of achieving absolute fulfilment in that magic moment on stage or in the ring.
Now I want to relive those feelings, those moments of release and letting go. The move from boxing to dance is like a pirouette: like when Chaplin turns a street brawl into a hilarious choreographed sequence.

Mourad Merzouki