Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Friday 27th February 2015
Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa was a 16th Century Sufi and is considered the patron saint of Moroccan acrobatics, based in circles and pyramids, derived from ancient Berber rituals. They are not considered as performing arts due to their religious connotations.
Azimut is Arabic for "the path" and this work takes as its theme the legend of the path taken by the thinker, the wise man, Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa in his attempts to reach the heavens, before deciding that he is needed more here on Earth.
Compagnie 111 is Aurélien Bory and Le Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger. Aurélien Bory draws on both the spiritual aspects and the unusual acrobatic styles to create a wonderful piece of physical theatre. It is presented as a string of fascinating scenarios, beginning with large sacks suspended on cables that start to rise and fall, eventually spilling their contents; the performers.
The performers crawl out from between the legs of a very pregnant young woman, a symbolic birth, or rebirth with a touch of the comedic. With the whole performance carried out in low light, and with blackouts, performers are able to appear and disappear almost instantly, seemingly magically.
In one section the artists begin to climb a huge mesh filling the rear of the stage, climbing right to left on a 45 degree angle, then climb straight down, representative of the struggle to get to heaven, and the decision to return to earth.
On the stage, and up on the mesh, they create pyramids, climbing over and around each other, perhaps echoing the dance of the celestial bodies that we see in the skies at night.
There is only one fast section in the entire evening, when the wise man crosses the stage slowly from right to left, with the others doing cartwheels across the stage, initially pushing him back as they go past him, gradually having less impact on him as his inner strength grows.
Defying Gravity might have been a song in the show
Wicked, but it also a good description of the Compagnie 111 performers in some sections of
Azimut. Near the end they swing on cables, way out above the audience, higher and higher until catching the curtain at the rear, hanging in front of the mesh.
The Sufi Saint reaches heaven, and is found resting on a section of 'ceiling', then rising and walking to and fro, before being lowered to the stage on the cable that supported him, another symbolic representation of his return from Heaven.
All of the performers, eventually, and with a few comical difficulties, climb into a sack held by the pregnant woman to end the evening. This was as much a spiritual journey as it was a performance and many were touched by what they had seen, although quite a few more seemed a little bewildered by the whole thing and accepted it as more of an aesthetic experience, appreciating the beauty, even if not understanding the full significance. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, as both parts of the audience gained from the experience.
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