Dancer, Choreographer, and Visual Artist: Walid Aouni's Unique Language
Walid Aouni, founder of the first modern dance-theater company at the Cairo Opera in 1993, has developed a distinctive language that combines dance-theater with visual arts, architecture, and collective memory. From Maurice Béjart to Robert Wilson, he claims total freedom, without hierarchy between disciplines. In an interview, he shares his vision and approach to his craft.
Early Beginnings and Influences
The Press — Your early career was marked by a foundational experience with Maurice Béjart. If you had to retain one lesson that still guides your vision today, what would it be? There are many references that one retains with Maurice. These are flashes that become an encyclopedia over time. Working with a great artist is not what matters most, but what one retains and learns without realizing it at the moment. At 17, when I joined his company, I was not aware of the importance of working with Béjart. We were in the midst of artistic turmoil, and we lived through that movement.
The most important thing is that movement is the architect of the body. Béjart is not a fixed school, it's not dance, it's theater. He was a man of theater par excellence, with a significant material at his disposal in terms of dance. He worked on the beauty of gesture before choreography. I learned everything with him: movement, music, philosophy, but also how to transition from one scene to another, how to breathe during transitions. Maurice made you discover new worlds and gave you the feeling that he was learning from you. He was a master.
Aesthetic Challenges and Inspirations
Was your opening spectacle at the Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival an aesthetic challenge? You know, I come from a fine arts background, which is essential for any artist. And dance, in itself, no longer tells me much; now I work on movement and image structure. In this spectacle, I wanted an aesthetic of slow, repetitive rhythm, leaving room for silence. It's essential not to be in acceleration or lack of breathing.
You chose to pay homage to Robert Wilson. What idea do you retain from his work? With Wilson, it's the void that's extraordinary. Last year, I staged a spectacle about Gaza, "Echo of the Wall of Silence," around the separation wall. I worked on the void transformed into volume. Wilson explores this in his own structure. I find myself today in this minimalism, in the transparent, in the instability of matter.
Balancing Disciplines and Exploring New Territories
Your work combines dance, visual arts, and performing arts. How do you balance these disciplines? Never balance! I love improvisation, anarchy, freedom to explore new paths. I give lines and codes. The image that emerges comes from a state of freedom. I seek the music that gives direction, and light is the dosage. It's the magic, the transparency I pursue.
You have defended contemporary dance in the Arab world, often facing resistance. What was your greatest battle? The battle is never over. Each generation has its own struggles, and each era has its own challenges. Before, it was almost total rejection; now, it's: why is he still here? But I'm not a careerist; each thing came in its time. I move forward, always placing myself in the future. The past is engulfing, like a black hole. Living in the past is suffering. The future is a mystery and always in the making.
Future Projects and Reflections
After this career, what territories do you still dream of exploring? There are many. I would like to work on the intimate... I would like to tell my mother's story. She was a novelist, who died three years after my birth. She had chosen to have me despite the risks to her health. As for me, after her departure, I grew up in a monastery, although I am Muslim. And it was only later, at the age of 8, when my father remarried, that I returned home. My mother, her life, and the place she left in my life are an essential matrix for me that I have not been able to approach until now.
If you had to stage your life as a spectacle, what would be the opening and closing images? I would start with birth, and as in all my spectacles, I would end with death.
You have made the body dialogue with architecture, music, and cinema. If you had to work with a completely foreign art form, which one would you choose? It would be light. Again and always light. The void, the intangible visible, total minimalism to the infinitely abstract.
In your spectacles, the body is a carrier of memory and wounds. If the body of the Arab world could speak, what would be its choreographic gesture today? Disappointment and powerlessness. The truth is loud, and we are stuck in our contradictions. My choreographic gesture would be to the measure of disappointment. It would be an artistic atomic bomb.
