With his new work XXL, Sofiane Chalal continues the exploration he initiated with his solo Ma part d’ombre.
In a mode that is just as playful as it is introspective — this time expanded to a cast of five performers — he amplifies his gesture and extends the theme to a group of dancers described, often reluctantly, as “overweight”.
How does one experience this collectively? How can one share, knowingly, the sensation of being “too big”? How can the certainty of being “too much” — a certainty reinforced by the gaze of others, including the audience — be shaken? What new reading can be offered of the vocabulary surrounding weight: what is said, what must be said, which euphemisms are used, and why? Because “it” is visible, despite the strategies of concealment, the lies to oneself, the reassuring thoughts.
“Can you tell someone is fat just by hearing their voice on the phone? When I call, who guesses it?” And so on.
From these bodies deemed “outside the norm” — a description taken literally, disarming the pejorative to reveal lives marked by the struggle for acceptance and then recognition — Sofiane Chalal chooses to draw out the best. And to play with oxymorons: power and precision, strength and lightness, ordinariness and achievement.
He writes from attitudes inspired by everyday life, through gestures, postures, costumes, and the lived experiences of each performer. From this starting point, the threads of transformation are pulled — through movement — shaped by the hard reality of judgments and injunctions, by hindered mobility, by the difficulties of dressing, by the weight of looks.
All this leads toward the restorative force of a dance built on a shared, unifying vocabulary.
Here, “too much” stands close to overflow, to abundance, to the contagiousness of laughter. And this contagion meets that of belonging — a chain of bodies and personalities dancing one another with spontaneity.
For despite the seriousness of the subject, fed by the feeling of rejection and the personal pain caused by fatphobic prejudice, XXL aims to be a light-hearted piece… Laughter becomes a balm for the soul, the breath, and the muscles.
Pre-premieres - 18–20 June 2026
Festival de Marseille
Premiere - 6–9 October 2026
Le Manège, Maubeuge — Scène nationale transfrontalière