January 28—February 7, 2026
Dance, performance, visual arts
Festival of international emerging artistic practices
Marseille and Aix-en-Provence
Marseille and Aix-en-Provence
Saphir Belkheir
Sycomore
2025
January 30 at 21:00
KLAP Maison pour la danse, Salle de création
Danse
Duration: 1h
Book your ticket
10€ / 15€
In co-presentation with KLAP Maison pour la danse
Evening Pass: €12 / €20 — This is la mort by Zoé Lakhnati at 7:30 PM, followed by Sycomore by Saphir Belkheir at 9:00 PM
Recognizing oneself in one’s own is not always easy. Through the construction of a fictional family tree, Saphir Belkheir traces his own lineage, composed of figures erased by history. Their evocation subtly brings forth a colonial and patriarchal legacy that leaves aside lives existing on the margins of the norm.
Why does he dance today the way he does? What can we grasp from his gestures? Saphir Belkheir draws his strength from a narrative inhabited by imaginary ancestors, nourished by queer experience. Like the tree called the sycamore, this immersive experience—blending dance, video, sound, and text—gives rise to new branches that summon and connect individualities and their future traces.
Biography
A French-Algerian artist based in Marseille, Saphir Belkheir creates poetic dialogues imbued with simplicity and radicality. Crossing choreographic practices, design, and visual art, and partly self-taught, he is influenced by hip-hop and popular aesthetics. After training at ENSAD in Nancy (2012–2015), Saphir participated in the DETER program led by Bintou Dembélé and Albane Guinet-Ahrens in 2021, and he recently obtained his Master’s degree from the Exerce program at ICI-CCN Montpellier Occitanie (2023).
Credits
Distribution
Conception and Performance: Saphir Belkheir
Artistic Collaboration: Morgane Brien-Hamdane
Lighting Design: My Bertin
Music Composition: Syqlone
and the teams of MC93
Short Film Credits
Director: Saphir Belkheir
Featuring: Saphir Belkheir and Maëlice Joyce Denis
Director of Photography: Makoto C. Friedmann
Assistant Director: Mélodie Preux
Lighting Design: Alice Brunnquell
Editing and Color Grading: Tomè-Manon Cotte
Production
MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme funded by the European Union
Co-production
Fonds Transfabrik – French-German fund for performing arts; africologneFESTIVAL; Alkantara; Riksteatern / The National Touring Theatre of Sweden (SE), as part of Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme funded by the European Union
Support
RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur ; Parallèle – Pratiques artistiques émergentes internationales
Residencies
ICI-CCN Montpellier; La Briqueterie CDCN du Val-de-Marne; Le Point Éphémère; Les Ateliers Médicis; Théâtre Joliette, a nationally recognized venue for diversity in contemporary performance writing (Marseille)
Premiered on
10 May 2025 at MC93 – Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis
Photo
Louisa Ben
