The festival’s second workshop focuses on the body. Asmaa Hamzaoui, Gnawa’s first female maâlma, introduces participants to the language of movements carried by the music in the lila—and without which Gnawa cannot be fully understood. The workshop is for people from all backgrounds: contemporary dancers looking for a different rhythmic sensation; flamenco, Afro, and folk dancers seeking to combine the Gnawa repertoire with their own vocabulary; non-dancers interested in finding out how body, pulse, and breath come together in this tradition. Hamzaoui works in three steps: the pulse of the qraqeb and the 6/8 mood of the Gnawa as the source of all movement; the basic steps and figures that make up the dance’s rhythmic vocabulary; and the dynamic building towards the jedba, the trance-like movement at the heart of the lila—experienced here in the protected space of the workshop not as a recreation of the ritual, but as an approach to its physical logic. 

No prior knowledge necessary. Comfortable clothing and flat shoes or bare feet recommended. Asmaa Hamzaoui, born in Casablanca in 1998, is the first woman in the history of Gnawa to bear the title of maâlma; on the evening before the workshop, she plays the festival with her band Bnat Timbouktou. Having attended the workshop, people will bring a different ear—and a different body—to the evening’s concert.