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PRESS


New York Time
Belles Lettres "Lettres d'Amour" is the striking, titillating highlight of the new Alvin Ailey season.

With Lettres D'amour (Love Letters), Redha -- a North African-French choreographer who uses just the one name -- has given the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (at the City Center through January 3) its most striking acquisition of the past decade at least. The piece is glorious trash -- movement theater that's all stunning surface effect -- comprising eroticism with a hefty element of S&M, mysticism with a penchant for times and places not our own, and a ceaseless stream of images that might be provocative photos for the glossies given the fluid continuity of film. It isn't dance, although it does require the athleticism, the sleek anatomy, and the mute, forceful stage presence of dancers. Just as one might expect, the Ailey performers, big on gorgeousness and dramatic self-projection, are fabulous in it.

Perhaps the greatest discovery of the evening was  Lettres D'Amour a breathtaking new work by Redha (...) Highly erotic existential and bursting with original movement and gesture , it si as disturbing as beautiful .

Chicago Sun Time








Les danseurs ne  trichent pas et se donnent réellement à fond,ils s'elancent avec une formidable énergie et s'ecroulent avec fracas.Ils sortent enfin epuises du combat après une heure trente de preliminaires amoureux, laissant le public au comble de l'exitation et de l'enthousiasme.


René Sirvin -Le Figaro

Redha has at his command a hypnotic dance vocabulary and a highly developed sense of Theater

Newsday, New york
REVIEW: Redha's Giselle a Symbol of Apartheid and Beyond

Giselle is the story of the fear of a myth, and how such stories control and even constrain a person. In the ballet, Giselle is a fair maiden who is so beautiful that she attracts the attention of not two but three young men. All have their eyes set on marrying her and Giselle, being kind of heart, loves each one in one way or another, but has given her heart to one in particular. The men fight. The myth all too soon becomes reality.

It is said that there are spirits that live in the Rhineland valley who particularly dislike men. Women are also at risk, as the Wilis claim the woman who is the most beautiful dancer. Giselle is the best dancer in the village. And faced with the violent fighting of the men, and the interference of her mother, she begins to dance. And dance, and dance, and dance. And while the audience watches, she dies.
vented. 

JOHANNESBURG TIME 


The dancing that Tshwane Dance Theatre showed the audience was breath taking. The movements were crisp and well rehearsed. It was a hyper-physical piece, with dancers throwing themselves into each other. I would not be surprised if dancers left with many a bruise on their backs and knees. I believe that the physicality of the dancers did well to express the anger that was 1980’s South Africa. The anger that a person could not love another without the government approving; anger that a white woman had fallen in love with a black man, and thus brought the risk of retribution to the greater black community; anger that the woman whom you loved does not love you back equally. The bodies physically hurt in symbolism of the hurt that Apartheid inflicted on young people. The company received a standing ovation.
 














 In subject matter and  monochromatic bleakness of design , the work obviously belong to current European dance-theater  Trend, but its emphasis on non stop dancing made it a potent American -Style show piece as well . When the Alvin Ailley American  Dnce Theater begins its run in Los Angeles tonight , the company will serve up a controversial piece one critic hascalled " MOST STRIKING ACQUISITION"  in a decade


Los Angeles Time

Dance crashes its way into the human skull
Robyn Sassen |

Paris meets KwaMashu in emotionally risky new work, writes Robyn Sassen
 

JOHANNESBURG & PRETORIA

DANCE

CrashDance

OUTRAGEOUSLY danced from within and outside of a stage-size dome-shaped jungle gym, CrashDance is a new work about the dynamism of moving thoughts which explodes onto our stage this week.

Choreographed by French-born, Algerian-raised, Paris-based Redha (who discarded his surname, Benteifour, years ago) with Sbonakalisa Ndaba, a KwaMashu-born product of JazzArt, this piece is fresh, beautiful and deep, and blends everything you can think of when you think "dance". Premised on a design by Wilhelm Disbergen, it's about how thoughts happen in the human skull.

PARIS THEATRE DU GYMNASE


C’est le chorégraphe Redha Benteifour  qui est à l’origine de ce genre d’œuvre, sous le titre « Simul », interprétée par sa magnifique compagnie de danse.
L’homme use de la chorégraphie comme d’une glaise épaisse et rugueuse, Redha malaxe la substance, il laisse volontairement émerger les aspérités, une sorte de vocabulaire en reliefs. Il y a des ensembles merveilleux, des enchaînements de virtuose, la rigueur sophistiquée d'une danse brute, presque primitive, une danse à corps et à cris. 

                                                                                          Laurence Caron-Spokojny