Moroccan Dancer with Just 4% of His Vision Wins Acclaim on Dutch Stages
With just 4% of his vision remaining, Issam Zemmouri continues to dance on stages across the Netherlands. Born in Morocco, the 32-year-old choreographer has earned praise from the press for his performances. This Saturday, he presents his latest work in Amsterdam.
To see his mother’s face, still in Morocco, Issam Zemmouri has to enlarge her photos on his phone. The dancer, born in 1994, is gradually losing his sight because of an inherited eye disease. Today, he has only about 4% of his vision remaining. That reality has not brought his artistic career in the Netherlands to a halt. On the contrary, it has become the material for his work.
The Dutch daily NRC published a lengthy interview with him in September 2025. Issam Zemmouri describes how his vision gradually deteriorated. For three years, he consulted specialists in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in the hope of finding a treatment. With no success. He had to relearn some everyday tasks and adapt to an environment he can make out less and less.
“People have to learn to look with their fingers. That’s what I had to do,” he tells the newspaper. The choreographer explains that he can move around easily in familiar places, but that even a simple change of platform at the station is enough to cause him difficulties.
His passion for dance goes back to long before this period. After settling in the Netherlands, he joined the artistic team at Amsterdam’s ZID Theater, where he has worked for several years. In 2021, his first solo show, Historia, was presented at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival before being performed in the Netherlands and abroad. He gradually developed his own choreographic style, which he calls “body poetry.”
A Moroccan dancer praised by the Dutch press
In February 2026, Issam Zemmouri reached a new milestone by taking part in HubClub’26, a production by the Introdans company and the Holland Dance Festival bringing together performers with very different backgrounds. His performance did not go unnoticed.
The daily De Volkskrant, which gives the show four stars, praises the “enviable precision of touch” of the dancer, who has only 4% of his vision. Specialist publication Theaterkrant, for its part, highlights the strength of his duo with dancer Igor Memic. These are two important accolades for an artist seeking to change how audiences perceive dance.
His new show, Fade Out, takes this approach further. First staged on June 4 in Amsterdam, the piece tells the story of light gradually disappearing from his life. Movement, sound, vibrations and sensations take center stage. Audiences are invited to discover a world in which sight is no longer the only way to experience what is happening on stage.
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The production began a tour of the Netherlands in early October, with performances in Den Helder, Eindhoven and Tilburg. This Saturday, October 10, Issam Zemmouri is due to perform at 8:30 p.m. at Podium Mozaïek in Amsterdam. The show includes audio description for blind and partially sighted audience members. Before the performance, a “Meet & Feel” session also lets them explore the set and stage space through touch and sound.
“Where I am now, it’s not darkness yet, but the path that leads there,” the choreographer told NRC. The phrase sums up the intimate experience he has chosen to bring to the stage, inviting audiences to discover his world in ways other than through sight.
