With rotating casts of virtuoso hip-hop dancers, Compagnie Käfig strives to bring people together and erase their differences, a mission which may partially explain why the company’s name is derived from the Algerian word for ‘cage’. Director Mourad Merzouki is based in the French city of Lyon, where the company enjoyed much of its early success beginning in 1996. Compagnie Käfig’s first Pillow appearance was in 2001, when they presented the U.S. premiere of the full-evening Dix Versions. The work seen here, AGWA, explores some of the basic properties of water with a stage environment incorporating actual cups of water (though only the cups themselves are seen in this excerpt). In 2012, this dance was performed on the same bill with Correria, a program that was received so enthusiastically by Pillow audiences that both works were reprised in 2013.
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