Breakdance ‘battles’ between competing crews and a steep rise in the popularity of contemporary dance are fuelling a renaissance in Tunisia.
Tunis, Tunisia – It is a balmy Thursday night in Tunis and the region’s coolest crowd is escaping the city centre. Headed north towards the nightlife district of Gammarth, these in-the-know trailblazers are leading Tunisia’s burgeoning cultural renaissance.
Tonight, the focus is a highly anticipated competition, a “breakdance battle”.
The venue, Lazy Club Tunis, is charmingly shabby – beer bottles propped up against walls and broken nightclub paraphernalia stacked up in corners; cracked chairs, shattered crates, a microphone discarded upon a table.
By the time we reach the dance floor, compact groups have already started to form. Onlookers are jostling on the sidelines, the beat swelling as the crowd tightens around a central point of focus.
With my view partially obstructed, all I can see is the occasional arched trainer or protruding hand rising above bopping heads. These limbs quickly disappear again, cheers applauding their quick movements. As I weave my way towards the front of the pack, I begin to understand why the audience is so enraptured.
A single dancer is currently occupying the man-made stage in the middle of the crowd. He has just launched into a sequence of convoluted moves involving rapid footwork and acrobatic backflips. Energised onlookers gradually inch closer to him. It isn’t long before another dancer emerges from the fray, circling inside the crowd to widen the space again and hyping himself up.
The performer is 25-year-old Oussema Khlifi, who recently graduated from the Higher Institute of Technological Studies (ISET), Rades University in Tunis with a civil engineering degree. Despite his academic credentials, Khlifi has decided to put all that aside and pursue a creative career in breakdancing instead.
We meet a couple of days later at a bohemian cafe in La Marsa. An upmarket neighbourhood, La Marsa has a distinctly bourgeois atmosphere; pressed linens and straw hats adorn the mannequins in boutique shops nearby. Fresh-faced Khlifi stands out from the crowd, his baggy jeans and bucket hat swaying as he walks towards me with a weightless gait.
Slightly abashed, Chebbi confesses: “I only started dancing after I watched the film, Step Up.”
The American film charts the love story of a disadvantaged street dancer and privileged modern dancer. “It was around 2010, and none of my friends thought it was cool.” Chebbi laughs as he tells me: “I would just rehearse the dance scenes from the film in my bedroom mirror by myself, then I started finding videos on YouTube to copy, too.”
Khlifi tells a similar story. “I stumbled across clips of people breakdancing on YouTube and became immediately obsessed. I did not know anyone else who liked breakdance or earned a living from it in Tunisia, so it felt pretty futile at the time.”
Things changed for Khlifi when he delved further and discovered old videos of Tunisian breakdancers from the 1990s.
“I saw a clip from 1996 of Seifeddine Mannai breakdancing with his crew, Upperunderground,” Khlifi says. “When I looked him up, I found out that he moved to France to perform there and even started his own successful dance company. Suddenly a career in breakdance seemed possible.”
Role models and a revolution
One issue was clear, however. “All of these famous Tunisian dancers left the country before the turn of the century. Most of them were pursuing better fortunes in Europe, and the regional scene suffered as a result. I realised it was up to us – the next generation – to revive it.”
After garnering a local reputation for himself, Chebbi was approached by one of the greats of this era – Syhem Belkhodja, owner of dance school the Sybel Ballet Theatre in Tunis. Chebbi explains that he found that the 60-year-old Belkhodja was equally committed to the idea of igniting a dance renaissance for the younger generation.
Later, I meet with Tunisian dancer and choreographer Selim Ben Safia. Aged 36, Ben Safia has been in the game a little longer than Chebbi and Khlifi, but he remembers well how attitudes have changed since the revolution.
“I remember my first professional performance. It was in 2007 and attitudes were more conservative then. Even the idea of a professional male dancer ruffled feathers amongst the traditional types,” Ben Safia explains.
“To make matters worse, I was dancing in feminine clothes.” Seemingly moved by the memory, Ben Safia pauses. “I couldn’t even invite close friends or family to watch. I was so scared of what they would think.”
The revolution changed all that, he says. “New-found support emerged from the Ministry of Culture in 2012, when they started to issue grants for Tunisian choreographers. The programme encourages us to create and organise performances throughout the country,” he explains. “The very existence and funding of these organisations helped validate the sport in society.”
Performances of contemporary dance quickly became popular throughout the country. This suited Chebbi, who says he “found his people” while taking classes and performing for the Sybel Ballet Theatre.
For breakdancer Khlifi, building community was harder to begin with. “The whole point of breakdancing is battling against others. This can happen individually, but often you organise, rehearse and partake in battles as a crew,” he explains.
“Crews also practise and learn together, it helps you stay motivated. I started to form the first version of my crew in 2016, but there were only a few of us.”
When speaking about his current crew, Native Rebels, Khlifi becomes somewhat emotional. “There are nine of us now, they are like my brothers.”
A few cultural organisations have also emerged to help expand the scene. Room 95 is focussed on promoting the underground culture of Tunis; one aspect of its programme includes organising the monthly breakdance “battles” held in Gammarth.
Ben Safia also started his own cultural incubator, Al Badil, to help breathe new life into the dance scene.
Al Badil hosts events to spotlight local talent and inspire others to join the renaissance. Its programme includes three annual dance festivals – Hors Lits Tunisie in March, Festival des Premieres Choregraphiques in February and Carthage Dance Days, which is also supported by the Ministry of Culture and held every June. The organisation also runs country-wide courses and workshops to increase accessibility.
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