©Camille Blake
©Camille Blake
©Laurent Philippe
©Laurent Philippe

Sorour Darabi

Mille et une nuits

performance

  • 2h15
  • F Hearing-impaired spectators welcome
  • G Hearing loops
  • E Partially-sighted spectators welcome
  • A Little or no text
  • B Accessible to persons with reduced mobility

Chorégraphie, conception, dramaturgie, textes et direction artistique: Sorour Darabi. Interprètes, chanteurs, acteurs et musiciens en direct: Aimilios Arapoglou, Li-Yun Hu, Lara Chanel, Felipe Faria, Sorour Darabi, Pablo Altar, Florian Le Prisé, Ange Halliwell. Composition musicale: Pablo Altar, Florian Le Prisé. Coach vocal: Henry Browne. Concepteur lumière: Shaly Lopez. Directeur technique: Jean-Marc Ségalen. Scénographie: Alicia Zaton d'après une idée originale de Sorour Darabi. Sculptures de glace: Samuel Girault / ice & art. Costumes: Anousha Mohtashami. Éditrice de textes et commissaire d'exposition anglais-persan (poetic societies, crafted counsel remote residency program): Ava Ansari. Responsable de la production et des tournées: Jenny Suarez. Responsable de l'administration et de la production: Martin Buisson. Production exclusive: Deepdawn/ Sorour Darabi.

Coproduction Festival Montpellier Danse ; CCN-Ballet national de Marseille dans le cadre de l'accueil studio / Ministère de la Culture, Arsenic - Centre d'art scénique contemporain (Lausanne), Initiatives d'Artistes - La Villette, CND Centre national de la danse, Tanzquartier Wien GmbH, Fonds franco-allemand Transfabrik pour le spectacle vivant, Charleroi danse - Centre chorégraphique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Festival d'Automne à Paris. Soutiens: Drac Île-de-France - ministère de la Culture, Manutention du Palais de Tokyo, CND Centre national de la danse, du Goethe Institute.

Invented by a straight cis man, the One Thousand and One Nights tales have often been criticized for having used the character of Scheherazade as a narrative tool. Thus, her body, her desires and her point of view remained in the shadows. Through modern translation and analysis, away from the orientalist gaze, Scheherazade has become a feminist icon. In this new tradition, Sorour Darabi invites us to look at this tale filled with other imaginations.
A spokesperson for new aesthetics, Sorour Darabi intends to show a reading of Scheherazade from a non-straight cis point of view. With Mille et Une Nuits, he creates a present-day opera as an itinerant performance. Like a physical experience, in which the vocal research is designed to draw a sensitive texture from the trans voice. Sorour works on sounds and vibrations induced by testosterone. The performance is created on the understanding that a voice can be monstrous and distorted, far removed from traditional norms of opera or lyrical singing.
At night, in the hollow of your ear, the timeless Scheherazade will fill the whole emotional landscape in order to reach her form of a mythical queer symbol.

Sorour Darabi is an Iranian trans-disciplinary artist based in France, working and living in Paris. He was a member of the ICCD underground association, whose Untimely festival (Tehran) hosted his work before he left for France. In 2013, he joined the Master Ex.e.r.ce at ICI-CCN in Montpellier. Since 2016 his projects have been represented in numerous theater and festivals in France and abroad: Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Centre George Pompidou (Paris), Lafayette Anticipation (Paris), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Centre National de la Danse (Paris), Tanzquartier (Vienna), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Tanztage festival (Berlin), Trans Amérique (Montreal), Zürcher Theater Spektakel (Zürich) Alkantara (Lisboa). He created Farci.e in 2016 at the Montpellier Danse festival, Savusun in 2018 at the Montpellier Danse festival, Mowgli in 2021 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Natural Drama in 2021 at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, From the Throat to the Dawn in 2022 at the Palais de Tokyo and Mille et Une Nuits created in 2024 at the Montpellier Danse festival.