French multidisciplinary artist Sadeck Berrabah, revealed to the world this summer at the Paris 2024 games, is a self-taught dancer-choreographer whose style is making a name for itself in the world of luxury and pop music. An innovator who briefly scraped by on the streets, he has made a name for himself in tutting, a form of dance in which arms and hands move in geometric figures.
What do the catwalks of Christian Louboutin and Coperni, the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Grammy Awards, Chris Brown and Shakira have in common?
Answer: Sadeck Berrabah, known on social networks under the stage name SadeckWaff.
An example of resilience, this former stammerer, once homeless and then a bricklayer, has managed to transform his precocious passion for drawing and geometry and his love of dance into a new choreographic discipline that has no shortage of poetry.
Blending influences from hip-hop and contemporary dance, he has become a major figure on the world stage.
MJ, Michel Courtemanche and Dragon Ball Z
Sadeck Berrabah was born on the German border, in Forbach, Moselle, between Metz and Strasbourg.
Introverted at school and almost stuttering, the young man took refuge in drawing and geometry, with manga characters like Dragon Ball Z and a taste for perspective as his companions.
His love of dance was born of contact with Michael Jackson and his music videos, each more epic than the last, such as the pharaonic Remember The Time (1992) with Eddie Murphy and model Iman. This video, broadcast on MTV, sums up Jackson’s technical complexity, cultural mix and taste for storytelling.
The man with the moonwalk is not the only source of inspiration for this native of Eastern France: Michel Courtemanche, whose VHS he devours, fascinates him. Here he discovered another seasoned multidisciplinary artist, equally adept at mime, dance and tap-dancing.
Dance soon became his other means of expression, as he adopted the “cardboard on the floor” culture of hip-hop and break. As battles progressed, he began to make a name for himself.
The man with millions of views
At the age of 18, his parents split up and he had to undergo the painful experience of living on the streets. This three-year period proved difficult, but forged his character. When he arrived in Montpellier, he started out as a freestyler (solo dancer) before making popping (muscle contractions) his specialty. At the same time, he earned his living as a plumber and mason.
2017 marked the start of his meteoric rise. His video “Géométrie Variable ” – named after his group of dancers – posted on social networks at the end of March, went viral. The choice of electro music to illustrate his figures, in contrast to the more expected hip-hop, made all the difference. His talent was then spotted by Shakira. The Colombian singer recruited him to incorporate new choreographic elements into her Girl Like Me (2020)video , a duet with the Black Eyed Peas. To date, the clip has been seen 800 million times!
From Jennifer Lopez’s World Of Dance to J Balvin’s 2022 Grammy Awards picture, via America’s Got Talent, his name is becoming synonymous with ingenuity and creativity across the Atlantic.
Luxury brands were also quick to snatch up his choreographic talent, such as Moncler for its show featuring 1952 dancers, performing at the foot of a confined Milan Duomo to mark the brand’s 70th anniversary. The man with the red soles, Christian Louboutin, asked for him for Fashion Week 2023.
He was then asked to do the show for the handover from the Tokyo Olympics to the Paris Games. For the occasion, he increased the number of his dancers from 3-5 to 64. In collaboration with Laurence Dufort of Studio Attitude, he delivers a universal message of hope in the midst of a pandemic.
While he includes people with visible and invisible disabilities, including wheelchair users and the deaf and dumb, he is once again approached to provide the show for the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.
A fixed point for strength
Developing a passion for scenic and video effects, this perfectionist of movement offers an unprecedented vision of body control.
For him, the lines of the body are, as he tells France TV, “points, squares, with which we can play on the isolation of the body and the fixed point”, a kind of transposition of the vanishing line in drawing.
The key to his tutting-based choreography is for each of his dancers to “understand his rubik’s cube with dots and half-dots everywhere”.
Mixing popping (muscle contraction), toyman (dance imitating an articulated toy), touching (movements inspired by Egyptian bas-reliefs) and hip-hop dance, the 34-year-old choreographer sets out to connect bodies. And rather than doing it with one or two other people, he prefers to bring together a hundred or so.
Because his shows erase differences, his message is meant to be universal, “no matter who you are or where you come from.”
Murmuration
In 2023, he is adapting his visual creations into a show, Murmuration. This hypnotic, poetic and resolutely modern ballet is inspired by the synchronicity of bird clouds, such as those formed by starlings.
After a sold-out tour of France’s Zeniths and a triumph with over 150,000 spectators since its premiere at the 13th Art theater (Place d’Italie, Paris), Murmuration takes things up a notch with its “Level 2” show.
A total of 35 performances are scheduled between November 15, 2024 and January 29, 2025. This revisited Murmuration features some sixty dancers reprising Sadeck Berrabah’s iconic moments as well as his brand-new choreographies.
An “extended” show to discover without further delay, before he embarks on a world tour worthy of his destiny.
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Featured Photo: © Sadeck Waff
