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Wael Shawky The Song of Roland at Louvre Abu Dhabi
Following its premiere at the Theater Der Welt in Hamburg in 2017 and a presentation at the 2019 Festival de Marseilles, Wael Shawky's The Song of Roland: The Arabic Version will be presented on 26 and 27 February at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The spectacular performance piece was devised by Shawky as a re-telling and re-evaluation of the events that play out in the eleventh century epic, La Chanson de Roland.
The hour-long piece translates the original French poem into Arabic and combines percussion and informal choreography with performances by more than 20 singers and musicians in the classical Arabic fidjeri style, continuing Shawky's interrogation of historical narratives as told from a Western perspective, and notions of national, religious and artistic identity.