EIF Review: Ihsane

There are parts of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Ihsane, performed at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2026, that I could not fully understand. Arabic words are spoken, written and sung without always offering an immediate route into their meaning; references to Moroccan, North African and Middle Eastern cultures appear and disappear before an unfamiliar audience has time to decode them. So writes Yuxi Jiang in a second review of Ihsane for theQR.co.uk…

The movement language is equally wide-ranging, shifting between ballet, street dance and culturally rooted forms. At times, though, the mix left me wondering about the intention behind certain choreographic choices, yet by the end of this extraordinary work, the need to understand or account for every element feels far less urgent. Ihsane has already found another way in.

The title itself carries a spiritual aspiration towards the best way of being with others. It is also the name of Ihsane Jarfi, the young gay Moroccan Belgian man murdered in a homophobic attack in Liège in 2012. Cherkaoui connects his death with another absence much closer to home, that of his Moroccan father, whom he lost at nineteen. From these two men, Ihsane opens out into questions of heritage, racial identity, faith, human rights, war, violence and forgiveness.

The performance begins playfully with an Arabic lesson, inviting the audience to participate and learn. Cherkaoui himself has spoken about learning to read and write Arabic as a child without actually understanding what he was saying. That childhood relationship with language seems to echo through Ihsane, where meaning arrives through sound, rhythm, image and sensation. The live voices, percussion, oud, piano and Jasser Haj Youssef’s extraordinary viola d’amore draw us into this world before we necessarily understand it.

From there, Cherkaoui gradually takes something deeply personal and culturally specific into much wider territory. His memories of his father, his connection with Jarfi, his Moroccan and European inheritance, and his reflections on the violence of the world all begin to overlap. The experience becomes increasingly ceremonial, moving between moments of seduction, joy, grief, brutality and contemplation.

A Visual and Symbolic Journey

Visually, the production explores identity, violence and human life through a constantly shifting stream of images. Four panels continually reshape the stage and transform in meaning. An Arabic lesson gives way to the blood of a slaughtered sheep, which slowly becomes the red of Arab national flags, followed by images of human eyes and fragments of documentary.

“The experience becomes increasingly ceremonial, moving between moments of seduction, joy, grief, brutality and contemplation.“

One of the most striking transformations comes when this visual richness gives way to a simple idea: Cast onto white curtains, the dancers’ shadows become shifting silhouettes, different in height, shape and movement yet suddenly united as human figures. The image is beautiful, but it also left me wondering whether we only recognise a shared humanity once the things that distinguish us begin to disappear. Can difference remain visible without becoming a source of division?

From here, the work moves further into a ritual. Sand, light, flowers and collective gesture gradually take over from the density of what has come before, creating a sense of mourning that is at once intimate and communal. Cherkaoui resists turning this into a neat resolution. What stays is something more fragile, a gesture of remembrance, and the possibility that some form of compassion might remain after violence and grief.

Cherkaoui has described Ihsane as connected to the funeral for his father that he never attended. Yet the work reaches far beyond personal grief. It becomes a meditation on memory, difference and violence, ending with a fragile but insistent belief in compassion and forgiveness.

Featured Image: EIF Review: Ihsane – Ihsane-18-08-26_©JessShurte_252-scaled