Habib Ben Tanfous

Habib Ben Tanfous uses a hybridity of genres to create a unique and composite form that reflects the complexity of belonging and individual narratives.

Portrait

by Hanna El Fakir

Brussels-based artist Habib Ben Tanfous is 31 years old and has an intense appetite for life. Dancer, choreographer and actor, his career started early thanks to hip hop. At the age of 15, he already devoted much of his time to dancing and participated in competitions as far afield as New York.

2019 was a turning point. Habib Ben Tanfous, who had never ceased to dance, was selected by the training/creation programme “tremplin hip hop#3” where he created Orchestre vide, a piece for six performers blending hip hop with karaoke. For this work, performed in Mons, Brussels, and Liège, he used the hybridity of genres to create a unique and composite form that reflects the complexity of belonging and individual narratives. In the same period, he started the one-year course “Danseet Pratiques Chorégraphiques” at Charleroi Danse where he learned more about documentary techniques.

Brussels-based artist Habib Ben Tanfous is 31 years old. Dancer, choreographer and actor, his career started early thanks to hip hop. At the age of 15, he already devoted much of his time to dancing and participated in competitions as far afield as New York.

2019 was a turning point. Habib Ben Tanfous, who had never ceased to dance, was selected by the training/creation programme “tremplin hip hop#3” where he created Orchestre vide, a piece for six performers blending hip hop with karaoke. For this work, performed in Mons, Brussels, and Liège, he used the hybridity of genres to create a unique and composite form that reflects the complexity of belonging and individual narratives. In the same period, he started the one-year course “Danse et Pratiques Chorégraphiques” at Charleroi Danse where he learned more about documentary techniques.

Performances

Ici je lègue ce qui ne m’appartient pas, 2023

Social media

Instagram

Press

Choreographic interactions

Performances

Ici je lègue ce qui ne m’appartient pas | 2023

Drawing on family archives, childhood memories and recent personal events, Habib Ben Tanfous makes his body the epicentre of his research and the medium of his language. Visceral, delicate, unique, his vocabulary translates the intimate ambivalences of an omnipresent heritage around which he constructs an incisive and deeply moving dance.

Hanna El Fakir.

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