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Mohamed Toukabri and Eyes-B invite you into their alternative photo booth. Unlike a standard passport photo, which requires you to pose as neutrally as possible, here, you get to take a self-portrait in motion. The ingredients? Your own body, rap music and light painting. Thanks to the use of light sources and the camera's long shutter speed, you step into the shoes of a graffiti artist. Through your choice of rap music, you briefly become a hip-hop dancer. Your flashlight becomes your spray paint, the room becomes the wall you draw, dance or write your own self-portrait on! After all, how you express yourself, and not what you look like, is what really matters. You get to take your unique portrait home with you afterwards.

Mohamed Toukabri was born in Tunis and began dancing at the age of 12, starting with breakdance. He joined the Sybel Ballet Theatre (TN) led by Syheme Belkhodja (2002 - 2008). At the age of 16, Mohamed trained in Paris at the International Academy of Dance. In 2007 he returned to Tunis to study at the Mediterranean Centre for Contemporary Dance. He worked with the choreographer Imed Jemaa in 5 productions between 2006 and 2008. In 2008, he started his studies at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, a dance school directed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. During these studies he participated in Babel by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet from Eastman Company (BE) (2010). Mohamed was a member of Needcompany, the international performance company in Brussels founded by Jan Lauwers and Grace Ellen Barkey (2013-2018). He also performed in the remake of the repertory piece Zeitung by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (2012) and Sacré Printemps! by Aicha M’Barak and Hafiz Dhaou (Chatha Company (TN)) (2014). Mohamed recently worked on the remake of the opera Shell Shock, A Requiem of War with the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, composer Nicholas Lens and writer Nick Cave for the 100th Anniversary of the World War I at the Philharmonie de Paris (2018.) He is also a part of Larbi’s newer creations; Nomad (2018) and the opera Alceste (choreographed for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, 2019). His first self-devised work The Upside Down Man (the son of the road) premiered at the Me, Myself & I Festival in Hellerau, Dresden in May 2018. The work is currently on tour in Belgium, UK, France, Lille, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria. It was selected for Het Theaterfestival as part of the #NewYoung category ( September, 2019 ). His latest work is The Power (of) The Fragile, a duet with his mother, that is still touring internationally.

CREDITS

Concept and execution Mohamed Toukabri and Eyes-B

Production europalia

Coproduction Beursschouwburg, Concertgebouw Brugge, STUK

Executive production Caravan Production