Compagnie Käfig

Mosaïk

Artistic Director and Choreographer:Mourad Merzouki
Assistant:Kader Belmoktar
Costumes byNadine Chabannier
Dancers: Alizée Mea Brûle, Christophe Gellon, Oussama El Yousfi, Hatim Laamarti, Charlotte Garbin
Production:Pôle en Scènes

For nearly three decades, Mourad Merzouki has been one of the defining voices of contemporary hip-hop dance. With an inexhaustible thirst for knowledge and an eye for unusual connections, he has taken urban dance far beyond its original boundaries. His pieces blend boxing, circus, and aerial acrobatics. Each creation emerges from surprising artistic encounters—visually powerful, emotionally resonant, and always distinct from the one before. Within this diverse cosmos, Merzouki emerges as a sort of choreographic alchemist who fuses styles, disciplines, and forms of expression, thereby continually creating new perspectives on hip-hop.

In 2022, as he concluded his tenure as artistic director of the Centre choréographique national de Créteil et du Val de Marne, he invited around 30 dancers from his company Käfig to bring key moments of his body of work to the stage together. For the first time, excerpts from very different pieces entered into a direct dialogue, painting a vivid picture of his artistic development.

With “Mosaïk,” Merzouki now translates this idea into a new form. The compact production, featuring five dancers, is flexible, mobile, and can adapt to almost any location—large stages, outdoor spaces, or rooms that otherwise have nothing to do with dance. Drawing on elements from earlier works such as “Käfig” (1996) and current pieces like “La Couleur de la grenade” (2024), the performance creates a moving collage of the most powerful moments from his repertoire.

The performance invites audiences to rediscover the poetry, power, and diversity of hip-hop—in a way that transcends generations, is accessible to all, and brims with artistic curiosity.