XXL

With XXL, choreographer and dancer Sofiane Chalal extends an intimate questioning to the collective body. He opens here a space for sharing with five performers around the norms of the dancing body. Together, the dancers explore what it means to inhabit a body considered fat, question the norms, and shift perspectives — starting with our own as spectators. In the continuity of Ma part d’ombre, an autobiographical solo he created in 2022, Sofiane Chalal explores with XXL what it is like to inhabit a fat body in a society steeped in norms and aesthetic injunctions. The overweight body is here a field of choreographic writing rich in possibilities, explored at the scale of individual trajectories. The piece explores the mechanisms of fatphobia in the field of dance, through singular stories that resonate collectively. Nourished by the pluralities of hip-hop practices from which the performers come, the choreography deploys a lively and anchored energy, like a response to any attempt at constraint or reduction. The gesture, precise and powerful, lets humor, subtlety, and subversion emerge. XXL is built as a collective conversation in movement, where the body is a critical tool as much as a space of affirmation, and dance is a catalyst to question our own biases of perception.