The Stage

Chouf Ouchouf

Published Tuesday 26 April 2011 at 10:28 by Liz Arratoon

Talk about having a spring in your step. The performers of the Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger are as agile as cats and have the same incredible elasticity in their legs.

A scene from Chouf Ouchouf at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Photo: Tristram Kenton

Following the success of its first show, Taoub, directed by the Frenchman Aurelien Bory, the Moroccan company returns with Chouf Ouchouf. Meaning look and look again, it depicts the colourful images and sounds of Tangier’s medina.

This time the show has been created/directed by the Swiss team of Martin Zimmerman and Dimitri de Perrot, whose work is familiar to London International Mime Festival audiences.

They have devised a simple set of five massive rectangular boxes that glide mysteriously and, with their hinged doors and panels, represent alcoves, alleyways and buildings. The acrobats manoeuvre them, hide in them and, in some of the most thrilling moments, perform on top of them - at times launching themselves to be caught in a fireman’s ‘blanket’ that becomes a trampoline bed.

Younes Hammich - a seventh-generation acrobat - usually leads them, but injury excludes him. His brother Mohammed, who has also trained since he was tiny, has the same prodigious strength and skills and his solo handstand/hand-balancing spot is almost super-human.

The team - eight other men and two women - is expert at building human pyramids and columns, some resembling Catalan castells. They move with confidence and abandon from the opening beach party scene through sequences conveying both the tedium and joy of life’s ups and downs, singing and chanting exuberantly in Arabic all the while.