Paris (AFP)
Yara al-Hasbani has already danced in squares in France, surrounded by a crowd of curious people. But today, this 26-year-old Syrian dancer and choreographer posed alone in front of monuments and museums in Paris, deserted since the confinement linked to the coronavirus epidemic.
Wearing a white protective mask, she performs various ballet movements in front of the lens of an AFP photographer.
An "arabesque leaning" in front of the Louvre pyramid, an "attitude behind" facing the Sacré-Coeur or the Palais Garnier which has not welcomed the dancers of the Paris Opera for over a month, a "developed" in front of the Moulin Rouge or a "six o'clock" in front of the Arc de triomphe (that is to say a 180 degree leg).
As if it were taking off, the dancer who was trained in ballet and contemporary dance at the Superior Institute of Dramatic Art in Damascus, also poses in front of Notre-Dame de Paris or the Eiffel Tower.
Member of the Atelier of artists in exile, Yara al-Hasbani left his native Syria six years ago and has settled in Paris since 2016.
"It's so weird to see these deserted monuments," says the dancer who has rebuilt her life thanks to the choreography.
She says she is taken by contradictory feelings: "I am both admiring the city without the noise, without the tourists, but it is at the same time sad, as if abandoned".
The dancer also poses on the slab of the Trocadéro human rights square. It was there and on Place de la République that she went a few years ago to meet her first foreign audience, creating a choreography in tribute to the hundreds of children who died in a chemical attack in August 2015. near Damascus.
© 2020 AFP