Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui engineered “Ihsane” at the Grand Theater in Genf

This is what young people do when they hang out together: crack jokes, gossip, tease each other, provoke a little and wait for something interesting to finally happen. In this case, someone turns the corner, starts lecturing and painting Arabic characters on the bare wall next to the mosque door. The young people are already silent, listening obediently and reverently, repeating the syllables and sentences that the instructor intones onomatopoeically – the audience in the Grand Théâtre in Geneva is also briefly converted into a choir. Anyone who deviates on stage and fails phonetically will have their ears pulled out or be hit with a cane. It almost always hits the same person, the black sheep. Until the group, numbering around two dozen heads, transforms into a sitting, dancing collective that recreates the pointed corners and sharp edges, the soft depressions, curves and the meandering flow of the Arabic script with hands, fingers and arms – like fleeting sculptures.