...Dancing, Salah, Les Twins...

...Drums, Soul, Laurent...

When I did the battle, I also played drum. The prelims were before my drum performance. It shouldn't took place in this order...

My djembé helps me a lot to be concentrated, to feel the mood and obviously to not be stressed. When I'm playing, it's like a protection, a shield. My friends said sth I never paid attention for: when my djembe is between my hands I can't stop smiling. Like a child with his toy. It's not as if I never smile, it's just different. I feel safe and in my world, nobody can touch me.

The Music is in my blood. The Musicality is in my ears. The Sounds are on my skin. The Song is my body. I can hear a drum from a crowd. I can feel a drum in an orchestra. I can recognize a drum within all existing instruments.

Then when I play... I just believe in my hands and my ears. I can play alone or with a song, a DJ, a human beatbox... It's the same to me: I let my hands moving. The music just go through my body before going out from my hands.

I can hear almost everything from a song. I remember an interview with Laurent where he said "I don't know what happen in my head but I can hear almost everything. And when I miss sth, my Twin take it.". It's the same to me!! I can hear all or almost all the instruments and stuffs in a song, and when I miss sth, my hands just take it by automatically banging it.

It takes all my soul. Deeply. As I explained to a friend, when I talk, I think with a rhythm. When I type on my cellphone or computer, I do it with a rhythm. When I talk to somebody I bang my hands with a rhythm (and sometimes ppl tell me to stop). When my hands aren't free, I shake my head or bang my feet always with a rhythm. When I don't hear a sound around me I make it in my head and with my hands. When I eat I groove with my chest and my head. It's like to breathe to me because I don't think about it. I just do it.

Like right now: I love the English language because there is so much possibilities to express my feelings and I enjoy writing and talking in English because it's like writing and singing a song. I do it with a rhythm. My fingers are moving and are following the beat I have in my head. When I write or talk, words come from my head as lyrics.

I can't do it in another way because it'll be like to change my way to breathe. Lau feels the same. "I think God creates me to dance.". Yes He does.

When a song starts, there's always a part of his body which is moving. Especially his head and his hands. AND what I truly like with him is when there's no sound, he can also freestyle thanks to the beat he has in his head! That's incredible and absolutely amazing!

He feels the music and so do I in a way... A special way.

Remember how I can feel and see energies? It's the same with the music. Let me give you a short story...
At the beginning of the year I was hurt. I couldn't dance for 6 weeks. I decided to bring my djembe with me at the dancing school to try sth with my closest friends in the Street Formation, the special one where we were only 7 dancers training every week end more than a classical class.
We started to introduce my djembe in this formation. One day, my dance teachers wanted me to play at the end of the session: just freestyling a rhythm with the dancers. And one by one, they had to dance in front of me. Our connections were on the top.

I started to play just one rhythm: in drums we call it a "sentence" because earlier it was the only way for the African slaves to talk... The first dancer came to me, dancing and smiling at me, giving me everything she had. What I did was simple: I kept her energy and her soul with my face and my chest, I just kept eye contact and then I changed the power of this rhythm. It was always the same one but deeper than at the beginning. Then she stopped, and I slowed my bangs to let the second dancer enter to my "drum circle".

And he started... The same: I kept everything and changed the way to play this rhythm, the same sentence... I did this way for five dancers.

The last one was very special: I played obviously the same rhythm and the same sentence. He began to dance but he was deeper with me than the others. I saw he wanted to talk to me. And I wanted to help him to talk with his body. His way to dance showed me the way to play. We were out of everything we were only him and I. In my bubble. Then I could read what he wanted to say to me...

He was drawing his soul to me! I took all his forms and moves in my chest and at that time I changed my sentence (but kept the rhythm) by adding some bangs on it: it was exactly connected with his freestyle, his moves. I was straight in front of his soul but he didn't notice it. If someone outside was looking at us, he would tell that this dancer knew my rhythm. But not at all. And I continued to add bangs on my sentence, following his moves.

When he stopped, he just stayed in front of me, his hands on my djembe staring at me breathless, and me keeping eye contact, breathless too. No sounds. Everybody were waiting for us to break this connection. He did it by asking me "How? How did you do that? How did you knew my moves? I didn't knew before doing it!".

After a while and attempts to explain how I play, they finally understood. I don't play a rhythm for the dancer. I play WITH the dancer. Like Lau when he says he doesn't dance for the artist, he dances with the artist. Because you have to talk with him to do it well. While dancing or playing music it's exactly the same: the dancer talk to the musician and the musician talk to the dancer. I mean that's my way to play and to dance. When I dance on a song, I need to understand it. But I need the song to understand me. That's what I give to the dancer when I play. And he feels it without understand it, but his body just follow my hands and my hands just follow his body.

Dancing and music work both in both ways: there's not only one way to express yourself. Lau know it, that's why he said "I think God creates me to dance.". That's why he gives so much to everybody to barely be lost in choreos. That's why he has this relationship with Larry because Larry knows it too.