Middlebury Scholar in Residence in Dance Kari Wolfe Borni presented a thought-provoking talk on Maghrebi Contemporary Dance and the history of Algerian breakdancing on Feb. 26. The event was a part of the Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series and gave insight into how dancers cope with their artistic aspirations amid the hostile socio-political conflicts in Algeria.
Borni is a dancer, choreographer and scholar. Her fieldwork research, supported by Fulbright and other fellowships, spans fifteen years of participating in contemporary dance practice and performances across the Middle East and North Africa — including sites in Marrakech, Algiers, Tunis, Beirut, Amman and Ramallah. She is currently researching interspecies modes of physical communication and, more broadly, performance-making within the non-human world.
As a physical act, breakdance relies on intensive contact with the ground, as well as acrobatic flips and spins. The art form is often regarded as a channel for subversive cultural statements, gaining worldwide attention when it was first introduced as a sport category in the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Breakdance first came to Algeria during the aftermath of the Algerian Civil War, where state control continued to prevail through information monitoring and forced curfews, wherein any young men out on the street past 7 p.m were arrested. Amid the widespread pirating of audio cassettes and videotapes, a VHS videotape of German breakdancer Niels Robitzky was leaked in Algeria, and it was quickly copied and distributed as a training manual during the lockdown. Amid a climate of strict curfews, fear and violence, breakdance burgeoned as a subculture that diverged from traditional sports played by young Algerians.
As a genre, breakdance is accessible to all; you don’t need any formal training to participate. In terms of space, the art form is equally accessible. Boxing gyms, soccer fields, public parks and even apartment rooftops are all variations of the “dance studio.”
Two themes that Dr. Borni frequently touched on were exile and uprootedness, because most performances were banned in Algeria, but Borni also suggested that some dancers prefer this lifestyle.
“Dancers express extreme relief to never have to perform the work in Algeria itself, alluding to the homoeroticism of the work as proposing potentially serious, reputational, if not corporeal threat,” Borni said.
Dancers from the National Ballet of Algeria made this argument with the hope of gaining refugee asylum status while on tour in Montreal. Citing Islamist opposition against dance as an indication of homosexuality and depravity, many of them later acknowledged in interviews with Borni that these sentiments were in fact exaggerated, and that they just wanted a means out of Algeria to make a living and, most importantly, to be taken seriously as artists.
Dancers often use language such as “breaking down” or “opening out of restriction” to expand their movement repertoire beyond the constraints of the more traditional, heavily masculinized breakdancing practices.
“I used to be very hard and very stuck with everything; I needed to expand my body and my mind,” said a dancer Borni interviewed in her research.
However, this liberation story also detailed a confinement to exodus: Algerian contemporary dance is consistently banned in the country, complicating dancers’ relationship to the practice.
Contemporary Algerian dance presents a subjectivity that grapples with uprooted, in-betweenness, rupture and displacement. The word Harraga translates to “the act of burning one’s papers,” and more broadly refers to the action of moving out of the Maghrebi in defiance of bureaucratic rules and elaborate visa systems. It also represents bodily resistance against unemployment, state surveillance and border control, as well as the enraged courage to break all boundaries that stand in one’s way. Today, we can all be seen as part of Harraga.
“By leaving a place where we were born and raised, we find ourselves drawn into a whirlwind of indescribable events. A cruel reality pushes us despite ourselves to leave. Our soul and our heart are also harragas. We long for escape and seek to build what is destroyed, what is broken within us, scraps of a life that has been stolen from us,” Borni said.
