Tābe’: The Burdened Double

Tābe’: The Burdened Double is a character and movement study about a creative doppelganger who searches for inspiration while carrying the weight of origin, memory, and self-pressure.

The project began with research into folklore around doubles and unseen companions. I came across Tābe’ تابع, a belief among some Arab tribes that every poet had a double who assisted and inspired them.

This connected to my own creative process: the feeling of constantly pressuring a hidden creative double to bring me ideas, while he keeps reaching, failing, and returning empty-handed.

For the choreography, I asked the performer to move like someone trying to grab something that always stays out of reach, while being pushed back by an invisible force.

I also introduced the image of an abandoned house on the character’s head, turning the pressure of origin and memory into a physical burden that affects balance, direction, and walking.

I wanted the character to feel less human and more like an insect-like shell: fragile, strange, and partly missing.

Inspired by Kafka, the body carries a sense of worthlessness and exposure, while the shiny gold elements inside suggest that something valuable still exists within the broken form.

The character was first developed through sketches, then 3D modeled and digitally sculpted in Blender, textured in Substance Painter, and finally combined with motion-capture performance in Unreal Engine.