Dans l'engrenage (“In the Gears") by the Dyptik company

In 2012, the two choreographers Souhail Marchiche and Medhi Meghari founded the Dyptik company, beginning by working on many artistic collaborations outside their city before returning to Saint-Etienne.

Full of energy, the duo combines hip-hop with other movements and influences. Demanding directors, they ask their dancers for a total, sincere and collective commitment. Strong and authentic, their works promote a certain kind of resistance, and sometimes even revolt, as in D-Construction in 2016, Dans l’engrenage in 2017 and Le Cri in 2018, for example.

Choreographed by Medhi Meghari, Dans l’engrenage uses powerful, poetic hip-hop movements to depict the frantic, endless race towards “more”.  Between shadows and light, the trance music increases in intensity, driven by traditional Arab dances and rhythms.

Initially, the group of seven dancers is a solid unit. Individuals suddenly became detached and work themselves into a frenzy, to the point of collapse. With movements at once sharp and flexible, everyone fights to keep their jobs, even if it means crushing those around them. The atmosphere is electric. And yet all of them have one thing in common: they try to fight the logic of the system and to escape it, before being pulled back into the collective gears.

The dancers of Dans le engrenage have explored “the pleasure of living, the balance of power, madness, fragility, worry… the pleasure of being”, explains Meghari. The two choreographers of the Dyptik company called on an actor, Corinne Puget, to ensure that the dancers managed to recreate the characters’ truth and developed a performance based on intimacy. They opted for an understated set: the staging is created through play of light that illuminates the places to be reached, the positions desired, while the dancers remain in the shadows.

With Dans l’engrenage, a deeply-felt show, the Dyptik company has toured in France and Belgium, and is now preparing to cross the ocean and head to the United States.