Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Ihsane receives its UK premiere this week at the 2026 Edinburgh International Festival, running August 14–20 at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre. The work is danced by a combined cast from two of Cherkaoui's companies: Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, where he served as artistic director, and his own Antwerp-based Eastman. Ihsane had its world premiere at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in November 2024 and has since toured to Ottawa's National Arts Centre and Montreal, arriving in Scotland as part of a festival built this year around the theme "All Rise."
The piece is a meditation on cycles of destruction and rebirth, created as a tribute to Ihsane Jarfi, a gay Moroccan man murdered in Belgium in 2012. Rather than staging the killing directly, Cherkaoui builds the work around grief, persecution, and the possibility of connection afterward, set to a live score composed and led onstage by Tunisian viola d'amore player Jasser Haj Youssef, drawing on the musical traditions of North Africa and the Middle East.
Why It's Worth Watching
Ihsane is Cherkaoui working exactly in the mode that defines his career: pairing a ballet company trained in classical technique with musicians and traditions from outside the concert-dance world, then building a shared vocabulary around a real, specific loss rather than an abstract theme. Its arrival at Edinburgh, rather than a Cherkaoui world premiere, is still a rare UK chance to see the two companies dance it together live. Given the run's short window, check the Edinburgh International Festival's official listing for remaining tickets and exact curtain times.