Café Kaváfis - Club Classique

A musical and poetic journey as a tribute to the traveller.

Writer and master storyteller Abdelkader Benali travels through the centuries-old history of the Mediterranean together with violinist and theatre-maker Myrthe Helder. Accompanied by musicians from Orchestre Partout, classical music, Turkish and Sufi melodies, Cretan sounds, Malouf, flamenco and Arabic maqam resound - music that bridges borders and centuries.

Café Kaváfis is a place where no one asks what you are doing there, and where arriving and leaving are self-evident. In a corner sits a man writing poetry. He watches the people coming and going - travellers, merchants, tourists, musicians, businesspeople, refugees and lovers - away from the Mediterranean light that falls hard on the streets at midday. The arak flows and the musicians begin to play. They have come from far away: from Genoa, Aleppo, Tangier, Crete, Amsterdam, Granada and Beirut. They bring stories of war and love, of mass tourism and ancient civilizations, of longing for a better world and dreams of an uncertain future.

Myrthe Helder and Abdelkader Benali previously collaborated on the production A Night with Scheherazade. Orchestre Partout is an ensemble of musicians with a refugee background who bring their own musical traditions. Concept, text and performance are by Helder and Benali; direction is by Naomi van der Linden.