Rayess Bek LB & Joan Baz LB
Chayyel

Live audiovisual performance

Opening in Marseille

Saturday, October 24, 2026
, at 10:30 p.m.

La Belle de Mai Open Space
Grand Cab
, Marseille

Combined ticket with Deena Abdelwahed’s DJ set

Credits

Co-produced with AMI (Aide aux
Musiques Innovatrices) and in partnership
with Cabaret Aléatoire

Chayyel, which figuratively means “take flight, set yourself free, improvise,” is an audiovisual performance in which Rayess Bek and Joan Baz reinvent the music and dance of the dabkeh. Using recordings made in Beirut with Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian musicians—tableh, nay, mizmar, synthesizer, and vocals—Rayess Bek presents a live electronic remix, transforming these sounds into a contemporary, pulsating texture. At the same time, Joan Baz manipulates live footage of dabkeh dancers she has filmed: slow-motion shots, superimpositions, and visual collages transform the bodies into a hypnotic and spectral dance.

In a conflict-ridden Middle East, where people’s identities are constantly being challenged, Chayyel acknowledges the fragility and power of our heritages. Far from freezing traditions in place, the project propels them into the contemporary sphere, as a gesture of affirmation and freedom. The term “chayyel,” used in dabkeh to invite a musician to improvise, becomes here a metaphor for shifting identities: neither fixed nor predetermined, but capable of reinventing themselves and expressing themselves beyond divisions.

Part concert, part performance, and part installation, Chayyel celebrates improvisation as a vital space for resistance, transformation, and collective reinvention.