AL BADIL | Tunisia
CONTEMPORARY DANCE
Al Badil - The Cultural Alternative is an association created in 2017 by the choreographer Selim Ben Safia.
Al Badil works between Tunis and the rest of the world for the promotion and democratization of art and culture in Tunisia.
It was initiated out of a desire to offer the Tunisian public and artists other cultural and artistic alternatives, thus widening the scope of cultural actions throughout the Tunisian territory.
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Labes
El Botinière
LABES
SYMOPSIS - Labes
Creation 2026 | 4 Dancers + 1 Musician | Durée: 60 min.
“Labes,” which means “everything is fine” in Arabic, is a piece for four dancers and one musician in which Selim Ben Safia explores the opposing forces of stillness and resilience to create a choreography of “happiness despite everything.” Set to the sound of the viola da gamba, beyond ruins and denial, the work becomes an ode to the dance of life.
Carried by powerful values in their simplicity and commitment—the strength of vulnerability, the virtue of the collective, and art as a space for healing—Selim Ben Safia dares to stage a true dance of joy. On stage, five artists from diverse backgrounds and aesthetic affinities—breakdance, circus, contemporary dance, and traditional dance—act as both performers and transmitters of an unwavering belief in the fundamental benevolence of human connection.
Echoing, in its shadowed layers, the memory of the Maghrebi quarter buried beneath the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 1967, this haunted stage is at once a space for dance and live music, as robust as it is luminous in its fragility. Infused with the energy of Palestinian dabka, Tunisian traditional rhythms, funeral chants, and the universal tones of the viola, the bodies probe the tension between what freezes, is buried, or hardened around us, and the vital force that continues to pulse within. A choreographic gesture of pure resilience.
EL BOTINIÈRE
SYMOPSIS - El Botinière
Creation 2022 | 6 Dancers | 55 min.
El Botinière, the name of a mythical cabaret in the city center of Tunis, is a choreographic piece that shows you the hidden side of Tunisian nightlife.
Through a simple and sober setting, I would like to take you on a journey into a world where joy, sadness, love, hatred, suffering, misery, desires, and life are intertwined.
6 Tunisian dancers will share the stage.
6 dancers, 6 characters, 6 lives, and 6 stories.
Different from each other, each character will take you on his nightlife journey through cabarets and inebriation, but also in a toxic and sordid world covered by a patriarchal and schizophrenic Arab-Muslim society.
El botinière will uncover the inside of the Cabaret: this sacred space soaked with lust where those who do not dare show themselves in broad daylight wander. It will also show different theatrical scenes through a disproportionate and immoderate dance that projects images toward another dimension.