{"id":52455,"date":"2025-03-11T13:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T12:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/project\/africologne-co-production-sycomore\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T18:14:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:14:35","slug":"africologne-co-production-sycomore","status":"publish","type":"project","link":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/project\/africologne-co-production-sycomore\/","title":{"rendered":"SYCOMORE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>It\u2019s not always easy to recognize oneself in one\u2019s own. By creating a fictional family tree, Saphir Belkheir reinvents his own lineage out of figures erased by history. Their summoning brings to light a colonial and patriarchal heritage that has been leaving aside the lives outside the norm. Why does Saphir Belkheir dance today the way he dances? What is to be learned from his gestures? The artist draws his strength from stories inhabited by imaginary ancestors and shaped by the queer experience. Like the sycamore tree, this immersive experience that mixes dance, video, sound and text, gives rise to new branches to call together and connect personal lives and what has been left behind. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n<p>Saphir Belkheir draws strength from a personal history shaped by imaginary ancestors and enriched by queer experiences.<br\/>His work explores a unique dance language\u2014one where meaning is revealed through gesture and movement. At the heart of his performance is the sycomore, a fig tree known for sprouting multiple new branches when one is cut. These regenerative branches become symbolic projections into the future, forming an ever-expanding network of (re)created connections. Sycomore promises an intimate and immersive experience, blending dance, video, sound, and text to reveal or evoke personal discoveries and speculative futures.    <\/p>\n\n<p><strong>ART DIRECTION &amp; PERFORMANCE<\/strong> Saphir Belkheir | <strong>ARTISTIC COLLABORATION<\/strong> Morgane Brien-Hamdane | <strong>LIGHT DESIGN<\/strong> My Bertin | <strong>MUSICA COMPOSITION<\/strong> Syqlone &amp; THE MC93 TEAMS | <strong>SHORT FILM<\/strong>: <strong>DIRECTOR<\/strong> Saphir Belkheir | <strong>WITH<\/strong> Saphir Belkheir and Ma\u00eblice Joyce Denis | <strong>DIRECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY<\/strong> Makoto C. Friedmann | <strong>EDITING &amp; COLOR GRADING<\/strong> Tom\u00e8-Manon Cotte | <strong>ASSISTANT DIRECTOR<\/strong> M\u00e9lodie Preux | <strong>LIGHT DESIGN<\/strong> Alice Brunnquell | <strong>PRODUCTION <\/strong>MC93 Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, in the framework of Common Stories, a Creative Europe program funded by the European Union | <strong>COPRODUCTION<\/strong> Alkantara Lisbon, africologneFESTIVAL, Riksteatern Stockholm, in the framework of Common Stories, a Creative Europe program funded by the European Union I Fonds Transfabrik &#8211; Franco-German Fund for the Performing Arts <strong>SUPPORT<\/strong> CommonMOB |              <strong>SUPPORT FOR<\/strong> <strong>RESIDENCES<\/strong> RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur und Parall\u00e8le &#8211; International Emerging Artistic Practices | <strong>RESIDENCES<\/strong> ICI-CCN de Montpellier I La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne I Point \u00c9ph\u00e9m\u00e8re I Les Ateliers M\u00e9dicis I Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Joliette, Sc\u00e8ne Conventionn\u00e9e d&#8217;int\u00e9r\u00eat national &#8221; Art et Cr\u00e9ation &#8221; pour la diversit\u00e9 des \u00e9critures contemporaines (Marseille) <\/p>\n\n<p><strong>Saphir Belkheir<\/strong> was a resident artist at CommonLAB 2023, part of the EU-funded <em>Common<\/em> <em>Stories<\/em> project (2023\u20132025), in which africologne participates alongside five other international partners. <em>Common<\/em> <em>Stories<\/em> comprises six complementary formats designed to explore questions of identity and cultural diversity with-in a rapidly changing European landscape. Within CommonLAB, eight Europe-based artists are supported annually to develop and share narratives that are too often absent from European stages. CommonPROD provides further support, including co-productions, production management, and individual residencies, as well as collaborative residencies spanning eight weeks in four different countries\u2014helping artists advance their practices and bring underrepresented stories to life.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not always easy to recognize oneself in one\u2019s own. By creating a fictional family tree, Saphir Belkheir reinvents his own lineage out of figures erased by history. Their summoning brings to light a colonial and patriarchal heritage that has been leaving aside the lives outside the norm. Why does Saphir Belkheir dance today the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":52861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"project_category":[114,129,107],"project_tag":[],"class_list":["post-52455","project","type-project","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","project_category-12-06-en","project_category-13-06-en","project_category-2025-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/52455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/project"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52455"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/52455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53687,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/52455\/revisions\/53687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_category?post=52455"},{"taxonomy":"project_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africologne-festival.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_tag?post=52455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}