With Zéphyr, Mourad Merzouki doesn’t just stage a theme, he stages a force.
If you know his work, you know he rarely stays still. A key figure in French hip-hop since the 1990s, he’s built a career on pushing the form beyond its expected borders, into circus, into vertical space, into live music, into visual art. In Vertikal, bodies defied gravity, in Zéphyr, they negotiate air.
This time, the horizon matters more than the sky.
The piece takes inspiration from the Vendée Globe, the legendary solo sailing race around the world. But don’t expect a literal reenactment of boats and waves. What Merzouki pulls from it is simpler and stronger: the human body facing an invisible force. The wind, unseen, unstable, unforgiving.
On stage, dancers lean into resistance, they slide and fight to stay upright. You can feel the pressure even when nothing visible moves, that’s the point. Wind only exists in displacement, so does tension.
Merzouki has always used hip-hop as a lens on society, not as decoration, as language. A language born in specific social and geographic realities, and capable of speaking far beyond them. In Zéphyr, that language meets something elemental, air becomes metaphor : what pushes us, what destabilizes us, what carries us forward whether we’re ready or not.
There’s no heavy symbolism spelled out for you, instead, you notice the shift from vertical to horizontal. You notice how balance becomes negotiation, how effort becomes visible. The dancers don’t imitate wind, they make you feel its impact.
And after a first success in 2024, Zéphyr returns to Paris at 13ème Art until March 8th, proof that the wind is still blowing strong.
And that’s where Merzouki is sharpest, he doesn’t explain, he creates conditions, we watch bodies adapt and we recognize something familiar.
Zéphyr is about movement, yes. But it’s also about pressure, about navigating forces you can’t control. About staying upright when the ground or the air won’t cooperate.
Hip-hop, here, isn’t trapped in its origins. It’s expanded. Rooted, but restless.
Kenza Boumahdi
Kenza Boumahdi is a journalist and visual storyteller working at the intersection of culture, media, and the audiovisual field. Currently enrolled in a Master’s in Cultural Journalism at Sorbonne Nouvelle, she combines writing, photography, and graphic design in her practice. She has coordinated major student film festivals, co-led a student media, and founded Asmar Media, a cultural platform centered on artistic creation and cultural events.
@boumahdi.kenza