Hawaii Tribune-Herald Island Beat Thursday, March 23, 2017 9 SOUNDS From page 5 dry Southern California climate to the warm, moist air in Hawaii. The instrument happily should remember the humid Italian mountain air where it was born 300 years ago.” Stradivarius string instruments, still sought by the world’s best musicians, represent the height of musical achievement. Time magazine observed, “Antonio Stradivari was an inimitable genius on the scale of Mozart and Beethoven.“ Chalifour, a native of Quebec, Canada, joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1995. Gaining musical recognition from an early age, he came to wide prominence upon receiving a Certificate of Honor at Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1986, with a laureate at the Montreal International Musical Competition the following year. His professional achievements made him a much-sought-after orchestral violinist, soloist and chamber musician. Tickets for the two performances can be purchased at www.hawaiiperformingartsfestival. org or by calling 333-7378. Proceeds from these concerts support the HPAF student scholarship program and the 2017 Summer Festival. male and female dancers, but for this project he was left with no other choice but to assemble an all-male cast. “With these 12 dancers, whom I like to call my ‘found brothers,’ there has been a choreographic alchemy I can’t explain,” he says. “They respond exactly to what I expect and I love in dance. They are athletes, but I didn’t want this athletic skill to eclipse what is more important to me: the meaning.” Koubi says he needed to go to Algeria to understand where he came from and the parts of his history that were previously unknown. He wanted to build bridges between his European culture and his roots from the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. “Then I had to (explain) it with dance,” he says. “I had to do it with dancers from Algeria using their specific skills. The youth of Algeria is like that — full of power, full of dreams.” Lazhar Berroug is one of the dancers in Koubi’s dance piece. He learned to dance in the streets of Algeria and has been with the company since 2010. “We have been working together since the beginning,” he says. “It’s almost like a family. The project was a real turn in our lives. We are now all living in France.” What Berroug says he enjoys most about working with Koubi is that he allows them to be themselves onstage. “(Koubi) says, ‘The piece is yours.’ I am proud to have this responsibility,” Berroug says. “We are very free in this piece even if the choreography is precise. I love that paradox. Hervé really managed to take the best out of each one of us, and this is very interesting when you have someone who always cares for you and tries to push away your limits.” Koubi, says Berroug, is in search of “true movement.” “The technique is important for him, of course, but he always says that the most important thing for him is to be on stage and not to pretend,” he says. “Every performance is unique, and we always have to re-create the links between one another. The most important thing for him is for us to find the alchemy between us onstage.” Koubi, who was born in the south of France, originally studied biology and dance at the University of Aix-en Provence before graduating as a pharmaceutical doctor. “My parents wanted me to have a good “WHAT THE DAY OWES TO THE NIGHT” diploma,” he explains. “I wanted to dance, but I also wanted my parents to be proud of me. I became a doctor to please them, but I think I couldn’t stand to be in a pharmacy selling pills. The appeal of dance has been too strong for me to resist.” So, after deciding to concentrate on a dance career and graduating from the world-renowned Rosella Hightower School of Dance in Cannes, Koubi gained professional experience as a dancer with the Opera de Marseille. Since then, he has developed many contemporary dance projects in collaboration with various artists, writers, choreographers and musicians from around the world. “For me, there are no connections between pharmacy and dance,” Koubi says. “Of course, I learned physiology and anatomy, which help me to better the body … but what I kept of my pharmacy studies is the love of the process of research. I have been fascinated by all the experiences and the investigations that lead to discoveries.” Koubi loves to experiment and investigate when he creates new choreography. “For ‘What the Day Owes to the Night,’ I have been investigating my own history but also I have been interested in all forms of other artistic expression (such as) architecture, poetry, music … all these elements are part of my research to help me create my projects.” Koubi says he always preferred to be behind the scenes as the author of a piece. “I really like to exchange with the audience, to share my thoughts,” he says. “Choreography is like an open book for me and my first pages were written starting when I was 15.” Dance is a declaration of love, Koubi says. “To share thinking with dancers and then build together a beautiful object of a dance full of meaning — as if it is a constructed common thought — to build and create bridges between the company and the audience.” He adds, “I want the audience to be moved by what they see and also invite them to share my vision of a global culture — of a brotherhood beyond frontiers and beliefs.” JOURNEY From page 7 WHAT: Dance performance by Compagnie Hervé Koubi. WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center, and 7 p.m. April 1 and 4 p.m. April 2 at Kahilu Theatre. TICKETS: The UH-Hilo PAC performance is reserved seating. Advance sales are $30 general admission, $25 discount, $15 for students with valid ID and children 16 and younger. At the door, tickets are $5 more. Call 932- 7490 or order online at artscenter.uhh.hawaii.edu. Tickets for the Kahilu Theatre shows are $68, $58, $48 and $20, available at the box office from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday through Friday, at kahilutheatre.org or by calling 885-6868. Photo by NATHALIE STERNALSKI Compagnie Hervé Koubi makes its Hawaii debut with French-Algerian choreographer Hervé Koubi’s piece “What the Day Owes to the Night” with three performances on the Big Island next week.
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