What the Day Owes to the Night

French-based Compagnie Hervé KOUBI performs What The Day Owes To The Night, a highly physical, stunningly fluid work for twelve French-Algerian and African dancers. Choreographer Hervé Koubi was inspired by his father’s deathbed revelation that Koubi’s family originated in Algeria, rather than in France as Koubi had believed. Exploring the artist’s newfound roots, this spellbinding work combines capoeira, martial arts, hip hop, and contemporary dance with powerful imagery evocative of Orientalist paintings—depictions of the Eastern world by European artists—and Islamic architecture. Though thrillingly kinetic, what lingers about the piece is the transcendence of a journey home.