Issam Zemmouri is this year’s guest dancer in HubClub 26, a co-production by Introdans and Holland Dance Festival. In this performance, renowned choreographers collaborate with Introdans dancers and performers from different backgrounds to give existing work a new life. HubClub 26 will premiere on February 6, 2026, during Holland Dance Festival.

In this NRC interview, Issam talks about his new creation Countdown: soon he will lose the light in his eyes, but right now he wants to let his audience experience what it’s like to navigate the world with other senses, with your fingers.

Read more about HubClub 26.

September 9, 2025
by Hassnae Bouazza
Amsterdam

A dance solo that isn’t about seeing but about feeling: that is the essence of Issam Zemmouri’s Countdown. Zemmouri (1994) fled Morocco because of his sexuality and was granted asylum in the Netherlands in 2021, where he quickly made a name for himself with performances at home and abroad.

His new performance, which premieres at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, ‘powered by ZID Theater’, is a search for a method to allow people who are visually impaired or blind to still enjoy art.

Upon arrival, visitors receive a night mask and must follow a rope leading to the hall, where the sound of water and the scent of jasmine fill the space. “When I go to a theater performance, I always sit in the front row and still miss 90 percent of what happens on stage.” Zemmouri suffers from a hereditary eye condition, cone-rod dystrophy, which causes vision loss. He now has only 4 percent of his sight left—he describes it as a beam of light standing between him and darkness.

In his performance, the senses take center stage. With the help of vibrations, scents, smoke, water, and touch, he hopes to let blind and visually impaired visitors experience his art, while also drawing other visitors into his world. “People need to learn to see with their fingers, that’s what I had to learn too.”

Movement poetry
Zemmouri calls it a social and sensory experience that constantly changes, because his life does too. “For me this is a kind of life-performance, so every month, maybe every six months, you’ll see a different version.” It’s also a way for him to explore the principles of art, focusing not on light or decor, but on one person in an otherwise empty, dark space without music, but with plenty of spoken word and poetry expressed through his body—‘movement poetry’. “In the dark,” he pauses to reflect, “everyone has to rely on their senses.”

Zemmouri speaks animatedly—you wouldn’t notice that his sight is almost gone. Colleagues sometimes forget that he can barely see, he says, because he moves smoothly through spaces and along the streets. That’s because he has done everything so many times, repeated it, that he knows exactly where to walk, which platform to go to, and where his belongings are at home. But when there’s a train disruption or a platform change, “I’m out of luck.”

Zemmouri spent three long years visiting hospitals in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany in the hope of a cure, but has now accepted that there is no solution for him. “It’s a kind of fade-out. It was very strange for me to have to accept this. How can I still live, I thought. How can I keep working, dancing, acting. I also asked myself why I was afraid of the dark, maybe it isn’t an enemy and can become a friend. I’m not there yet—being friends with it—but I’ve noticed that I gain something else in return, that I learn something new, other ways of doing things, my senses are becoming sharper.”

From his performance:
Do not be afraid of the dark…
Maybe it isn’t an enemy, but a silent friend.
A shelter,
where your soul begins to shine before your eyes ever see light.

Darkness? It is only the absence of light. Nothing more.
But maybe… exactly what you needed to find the light within yourself.

Video calls with his mother
“The darkness is taking over my life in a gentle way. It’s gradual. I don’t even notice it until I realize I can no longer see certain things.” He mentions things around the house, but also video calls with his mother in Morocco. Thanks to the little light he still perceives, he can enlarge her photos on his phone to see her face. He tries to plant the image of his mother in his memory, fearing that once darkness fully takes over, he won’t be able to picture her face anymore. That ray of light is, for him, the remaining connection with the outside world. “I can tell who someone is, a friend or my sister, by the way they move. The light I still see helps me remember things. What I am in now is not darkness, but the path leading toward it.”

He misses being able to look at something and immediately know what it is, and he misses colors. Sometimes, he admits, it’s better not to realize what is happening in your life and just keep going. His performance is a way to express these far-reaching changes. “For me, art is not a luxury, but a way to show people what is happening in life. Art is there to scream it out.”

For Zemmouri, it feels as if he must flee for the second time in his life; the first time leaving Morocco, and now into a life of darkness, as the light in his eyes fades. “I have no choice. It feels like a journey for me, I am going to another place and I don’t know if I will be welcome there, what opportunities I will have, or how much I will be able to do.”

Countdown can be seen on September 5, 6, 11, and 12 at the Fringe Festival. Info: amsterdamfringefestival.nl

Choreographer and dancer Issam Zemmouri: “It feels like a journey for me, I am going to another place and I don’t know if I will be welcome there.”

Read the interview in NRC