A procession of people. Winding like a living organism. It is contagious to watch. You feel it in the air, in the sounds or silence, in your chest. The people of Calabria call this “Focu Meu” - an inner fire that passes from one person to another. For grief or celebration, for mourning or euphoria. “Focu Meu” is the title of the new creation by choreographer Benjamin Kahn, premiering worldwide as a co-production of One Dance Festival.

On stage, six dancers explore how their movements can harmonize or shift to create collective music. The connection between the rhythm of the feet - anchored in the gravity of the ground, and other parts of the body that free themselves from it is disrupted. Benjamin Kahn works with dancers with vocal training - from opera and beyond, drawing inspiration from classical harmony and expressive operatic singing to industrial rap and heavy metal.

The floor becomes a living instrument - a percussive surface on which the dancers inscribe their rhythms. Silence is not a pause but a space for listening, while the black box and minimalist scenography amplify the presence of the body and the perception of sound. Kahn once again works with poetic texts that the performers speak, groan, or shout from the stage, expressing emotion not only through their bodies but also through their voices.

The stark contrast between darkness and light, emptiness and presence, creates an almost metaphysical space. Within it, the internal and the external play hide-and-seek, leaving clues for the audience about what eludes them, thereby activating their imagination. Sound is also part of the scenography, as it creates a sensory space that expands and transforms the performers’ actions. In collaboration with Raphaël Hénard, the performance’s soundscape amplifies the sounds of the body, sighs, and breathing, while simultaneously integrating external elements that introduce a twist.

“Focu Meu” asks whether it is possible, within a contemporary theatrical context, to create a space akin to a ritual—a space for transformation, sharing, and collective experience. “Focu Meu” does not reproduce existing, time-worn, or traditional rituals. It is not inspired by folk forms, gestures, or dances, but instead explores the ideas, motivations, and consequences of such rituals.

Whether in a funeral procession, a demonstration, or a festive parade, this collective movement reveals how people gather and synchronize, but also how they distinguish themselves or drift apart. Shifts in rhythm - accelerations, pauses, dispersions - reflect fractures between belonging and refusal, between community and autonomy. In this way, the procession becomes a political field where power relations, forms of solidarity, and gestures of resistance are replayed.

“Focu Meu“ is a word I heard during a residency in Calabria, and it means “fire” or “the burning in my chest” in the local dialect. An echo chamber for the emotion that bursts forth, in a single expression understood and shared by all, it expresses both pain and vitality, loss and the urgency to exist. It is from this feeling of inner burning that I want to construct a piece about the intensity of emotions, trance, and the power of the collective.

The figure of the procession (essential to the project) embodies this dynamic: walking together, connecting, making dance a form of shared resistance, like what we experience in protests, celebrations, or carnivals—those moments when the individual fades into the collective, when we feel carried, embraced, included in a single force.

The cry in “Focu Meu“ is not only pain: it is also a scream of life, pleasure, joy, and resistance. It permeates breath, movement, and skin. It becomes choreographic material. Through it, the piece questions our relationship to vulnerability, power, and what burns within us. I want to create an organic and vibrant dance space, where bodies intersect, exhaust themselves, and support each other, giving rise to a beauty that emerges from chaos. “Focu Meu” is an attempt to transform burning into light, screaming into singing, urgency into sharing.

Benjamin Kahn

Benjamin Kahn is a dancer and choreographer based in Brussels. He studied dramaturgy and theatre at the University of Aix en Provence and the Conservatoire de Rennes, and graduated from ESAC (École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque) in Belgium. Following his studies, he worked with choreographers such as Philippe Saire, Benjamin Vandewalles, Nicole Beutler, Ben Riepe, Frédéric Flamand, Maud Le Pladec, Egle Budvytyte and Alessandro Sciaronni.

He is also an outside eye and dramaturgist for other projects (“Cuir” by Cie Un loup pour l'homme, “Darkmatter” by Cherish Menzo among others) and teaches dance at the CNAC, ESAC and conservatoires.

Since 2019 he has created his own projects. Seeing dance and choreography as powerful political tools, he is particularly interested in constructing and deconstructing the way we view individual and collective bodies. Drawing on the interdisciplinarity of his background and the richness of his studio encounters with singular performers, he creates pieces that combine texts, precise choreographic writing and powerful sound and light landscapes to question the issues of the society. Between 2019 and 2023 he will be creating a trilogy of solos : “Sorry, But I Feel Slightly Disidentified...“ (2019), “Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me“ (March 2023) and The Blue Hour (June 2023), questioning projections onto bodies, the gaze, and the link between the intimate and the collective.

His previous work, “Bless the Sound that Saved a Witch like me“, was presented by the One Dance Festival in 2024. “Focu Meu“ is his first group piece for six performers. In it, Kahn explores the tension between individuality and the chorus, between harmony and dissonance, between intimate cries and collective polyphony.

Focus Belgium is realised with the support of Wallonie - Bruxelles International & Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation. The performance is created with the support of the National Culture Fund and its “Creation Program” and with the support of Teatroskop, French Institute in Bulgaria and the Embassy of France in Bulgaria.