From Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s What the Day Owes to the Night, which came to OZ Arts in 2023
With striking visuals and daring physicality, Compagnie Hervé Koubi’s What the Day Owes to the Night has dazzled audiences around the world since its premiere in 2013. But beyond all the high-flying choreography, this groundbreaking work tells a deeply personal story of family and cultural identity.
Growing up in France, founder Hervé Koubi assumed his family had deep roots there. But it wasn’t until he was 25 years old — and already building a successful dance career — that his father revealed the truth about the family’s Algerian heritage, sharing a photo of Koubi’s great-grandfather dressed in traditional Arabic clothing. Inspired by this revelation, Koubi embarked on a journey across the Mediterranean that would not only change his life, but also reshape his approach to dance.
“I think it was quite shocking at first,” says Guillaume Gabriel, Koubi’s longtime collaborator and co-founder of Compagnie Hervé Koubi. “But he immediately knew that he had to go to Algeria — not just to see the landscapes, but also to meet the dancers. We contacted the French Institute, and they told us there were no dance schools or conservatories in Algeria. But we managed to contact a few people there, and told them we were interested in meeting about a possible project. We said they could bring other dancers along if they wanted. The day of casting, we had 250 dancers show up. It was amazing.”
Of course, Koubi and Gabriel’s experience was primarily in contemporary dance, while the Algerian dancers — who were almost exclusively male — had more of a street-dance background. Gabriel says such differences only served to sharpen their focus and spark the imagination. Koubi had always worked with both male and female dancers in the past, but felt he had found a brotherhood of sorts in North Africa. He soon selected a dozen male dancers for the project, taking his company in an entirely new direction.
“From the beginning, we wanted to connect the shores of the Mediterranean Basin somehow, honoring the mix of cultures,” Gabriel says. “But we also wanted to keep the essence of each dancer and their technique. So Hervé would create a dance phrase and teach it to the dancers, saying: ‘Now you give me a response.’ This is how we created a general vocabulary. There was a lot of come-and-go between us, and we found these dancers were very open and available to this exchange of ideas.”
Gabriel says this collaborative exchange would eventually lead to the creation of What the Day Owes to the Night, a remarkable piece that blends elements of hip-hop, capoeira and other martial arts, and contemporary dance. Dressed only in flowing white pants, the dancers balance explosive flips with fluid elegance, moving to musical selections that range from Bach to traditional Sufi music.
“In creating the piece, Hervé was inspired by everything from the architecture and mosaics of Algeria to Arabic calligraphy — and so it was with the costumes,” says Gabriel, who is credited with the costume design. “So if the choreography references Arabic calligraphy, the costumes provide the punctuation — emphasizing the dancers’ moves. In the beginning, we thought we might use different colors. But we found that with all white, we could see all the shades of the dancers’ skin. It became another way to pay tribute to the multiplicity of people from around the Mediterranean Basin.”
For Mark Murphy, executive and artistic director of OZ Arts, What the Day Owes to the Night offers a unique opportunity for Nashville audiences.
“It is thrilling to experience the sheer joy of transcendent, awe-inspiring physical movement, which is reason enough to want to give audiences a chance to witness [the piece] firsthand,” he says. “But it is also ‘essential reading’ for anyone interested in the evolution of contemporary dance. This piece is a wonderful example of how a choreographer’s movement vocabulary can be an amalgam of different cultural traditions.
“All contemporary dance, art and music comes from somewhere,” Murphy adds. “And I like exploring the evolution of these forms with innovative artists that have something to teach us — and are also thrilling to watch.”
For Gabriel, it’s this idea of evolution that is most exciting.
“Our dancers are no longer just from Algeria,” he says. “We have dancers from Morocco, France, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Italy. And as we’ve integrated these dancers into the company, we’ve integrated other ways of moving, other techniques. Every dancer brings their own interpretation, their own experiences to the work. That’s what keeps the art alive. And who knows — if we can dance together, maybe we can live together, too.”
