The tribute was addressed by Driss El Yazami, President of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), André Azoulay, Counsel to His Majesty King Mohammed VI, artist and journalist Fatym El Ayachi, artist and director of the Institut Supérieur d'Art Dramatique et d'Animation Culturelle (ISADAC), Latefa Ahrrare, publisher Michèle Desmottes and Neila Tazi, Chairwoman of the Fédération des Industries Culturelles et Créatives, who passed away in Casablanca on 16 January 2024 at the age of 80.

Addressing this poignant tribute, Mr Driss El Yazami, recalled his moments of friendship with Lahcen Zinoun, and highlighted, through the latter's career, that lesser-known aspect of migration, “cultural Migration, the migration of students and artists, of writers and creators who played an essential role in the history of migration, but also a key and central part in Morocco's modernity”.

Invited by the CCME, Mr André Azoulay, Advisor to His Majesty the King, said that he and Lahcen Zinoun shared "an endless appetite for everything that our country and its people have to say to others”.

At the same time, we had the same determination to convince others to join us in joining the club in which we sought to convey through culture the wealth of Morocco, in places in which politics was unable to do so and ideologies had given up.

He vividly recalls the quality of Lahcen Zinoun: “He knew how to be calm in difficult situations. He never let adversity upset him, and while I was still fragile, he taught me to deal with it so that I could defeat it with a smile and without necessarily resorting to confrontation”.

The public was introduced through testimonials to the virtues of a “man of tremendous value”, a “man who had been transfigured by passion”, according to publisher Michèle Desmottes. A visionary choreographer, a deeply moving writer, a poet with such a unique sensitivity, a talented sculptor, with something both Celestial and deeply grounded’, said an emotional Fatym El Ayachi, artist and journalist.

The first dancer of Moroccan origin to be named danseur étoile in Europe, Lahcen Zinoun moved back to his native country to begin a long artistic career. Together with his wife, the dancer Michèle Barette, in 1978 he founded a school of dance and a ballet company, ‘le Ballet-Théâtre Zinoun’, which trained numerous dancers, including their two sons, Jaïs, winner of the first prize in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1988 and soloist with the San Francisco Ballet (USA), and Chems-Eddine, dancer at the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Antwerp (Belgium) and then at the Ballet du Nord in France. He died in a car crash in 2008.

As both director and producer, Lahcen Zinoun has made four shorts and two feature films. With CCME support, in May 2023 CLB re-issued Lahcen Zinoun's autobiography ‘Le rêve

interdit’ (Maha Éditons), presented almost a year ago in Rabat during the last edition of the Book Fair.

CCME