M36-524

October 4, 2017: Dream City in the medina of Tunis. A dance performance by Rochdi Belgasmi in a traditional hammam. “Arous Oueslat”: From sexuality to dance, it’s almost just one step. And from dance to debauchery, it’s just two steps. Or three. In the space between them, Rochdi Belgasmi’s work continually revisits the gray areas of their shared memory. It is through Selim, the son of a prostitute from the late 18th century, that Rochdi Belgasmi explores here the masculine body and its repressed sexuality. The character of Selim appears on stage, in this hammam, to bear witness but also to manipulate. These are the laws—his laws—of hospitality. Between the attraction of one and the rejection of the other, the performance holds up an invisible mirror to the sociality of the prostitute’s body and its masculine fantasy in Arab-Muslim society, but also to the body of the city and its imaginaries, its erogenous zones, and its visceral connections.

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