Morocco’s D.I.Y. Dance Crews
MARRAKESH, Morocco —
Under the yellow domed ceiling of the Theater Royal of Marrakesh, a
small crowd cheered and watched in awe as champion break dancers from
around the world battled, with head slides, freezes and kicks, in a
competition streamed globally online.
“Make
some noise!” the host of the event screamed into a microphone. “Show
enthusiasm. People don’t know anything about Morocco.”
The spectators grew louder.
They
were especially excited about the performance of Fouad Ambelj, a
24-year-old Moroccan prodigy who dances as Lil Zoo and who has become a
worldwide sensation.
“It’s
a great outlet for negative energy,” Mr. Ambelj said. “I love that
there are no rules. I can express anything I want. It makes me feel
free.”
In Morocco, where state funding and institutions for the arts is scarce,
break dancing has empowered young people to make their own
entertainment since its arrival in the 1980s. The dance form, born a
decade earlier in the Bronx, was ostensibly free; all it required were
able bodies and open space.
“As a
young guy in Casablanca, if you don’t have money or you don’t want to
sit in a cafe every day talking about football, one fun thing is to go
to a space and conquer it,” said Cristina Moreno Almeida, a postdoctoral
fellow at King’s College in London who has studied hip-hop culture in
Morocco. “It’s a global language that they all speak and they all know.”
For
years, these B-boys practiced in public outdoor spaces. They fashioned
makeshift dance floors out of cardboard to practice head spins when they
couldn’t find grass fields.
You can read the rest of the stories and check out the stunning photos by Yassine Alaoui Ismaili on the New York Times' website here
