All the Perfumes of Arabia

In 1978, Palestinian-American professor Edward Said wrote the influential book Orientalism. The book's premise is that the romantic-colonialist view with which the West looks at the East—the Middle East and Asia—influences the way the West treats and studies those areas. This view is reinforced by cultural expressions such as films, theatre and literature, in which an exotic, non-existent East is constructed that is sensual, primitive, irrational and “unenlightened”. White glasses, Said says, thus limit the view with which one looks from the West to the East. Said's book greatly influenced thinking about how colonialism influenced Western thinking even after the end of the colonies, but also influences how the "East" views itself.

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During the rehearsal process, both the Mauritanian writer Mohammedou Ould Slahi and the Dutch writer Rik van den Bos are present in the rehearsal room. And the actors and dancers also come from different cultures from East and West. This creates an interdisciplinary dialogue in which different perspectives discuss, collide and merge. And which asks the viewer the question: with what view do you look at the Other and his place in the world?

director Guy Weizman
choreography Roni Haver
text Mohammedou Ould Slahi & Rik van den Bos & Fatemeh Ekhtesari
cast Sarah Janneh, Sanne den Hartogh, Anja Herden, Bien de Moor, Igor Podsiadly, Jésula Toussaint Visser, Tamer Nafar, and others-|-
with live music by Asko Schonberg Ensemble and Slagwerk den Haag
decor Ascon de Nijs
costumes Maison the Faux