Date: 9 August 2026
Time: 3.00pm
Venue: Institut français d’Écosse (The French Institute)
Running time: 35 minutes
Rating: ★★★★ (4/5)
Reviewed by: Eileen Inglis
Powerful, playful and deeply personal, BIGGER challenges what we think a dancer should look like.
Sofiane Chalal walks onto the stage carrying an umbrella and a brown paper bag. He sits at a table, takes what looks like a fast-food container from the bag and begins to eat.
It’s a playful opening to a performance that becomes increasingly personal.
Chalal is a professional dancer with the kind of body people don’t necessarily expect a professional dancer to have – which is the central theme of the show.
Combining mime and street dance with humour and recorded personal testimony, BIGGER explores what it means to live and perform in a body that other people make assumptions about.
As Chalal dances – beautifully, energetically and with extraordinary physical expression – recordings of his own voice reveal some of his experiences of being judged because of his size. At times they’re difficult to hear, particularly when he describes how other people’s reactions have affected the way he sees and behaves in his own body.
There’s something powerful about hearing those vulnerabilities while simultaneously watching what his body can do. The confident, playful performer in front of us exists alongside someone who is acutely aware of how other people might perceive him.
Just when BIGGER appears to have ended, Chalal returns for an audience Q&A.
We learn that he started dancing at seven, competed in hip-hop battles and went on to work professionally. He also speaks candidly about learning, through this piece, to embrace parts of his body that he usually tries to hide.
Then, Chalal has one final surprise for us…
I went to BIGGER expecting to watch a dance performance. What I got was something much more personal: funny, joyful and unexpectedly moving. It left me thinking about how quickly we make assumptions about bodies – and how little those assumptions tell us about the person living inside them.
Tickets:
BIGGER – France Showcase tickets
Show information:
BIGGER – Sofiane Chalal at Le Manège
