Bouazizi's early life in Sidi Salah, a small village near the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, was defined by economic struggle.
One of the forum's recent co-productions (with Sadler's Wells) was In the Spirit of Diaghilev, a programme of Ballets Russes-inspired works that brought together Wayne McGregor, Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Javier de Frutos.
As he lay dying, the ordinary people of Sidi Bouzid rose up against the petty bureaucrats who had held them in check until then.
But a short way along the coast, at the village of Sidi Kaouki, where we began our beach walk, the wind had begun to die down.
Our final walk the next day was to be a short inland trek back towards Sidi Kaouki, a nice contrast to the previous days' coastal strolls, before being picked up by 4x4s and taken back to Marrakech to wash the sand off in a hot shower (not quite as good as a cooling dip in the sea).
Reinterpretations of this 1912 ballet have ranged from Jerome Robbin's 1953 duet to the sensual faux-simplicity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's 2009 Faun.
Finally, from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui comes Genesis, a characteristically ambitious meditation on life and death, which he's created in collaboration with Yabin Wang, the Chinese dancer featured in the film House of Flying Daggers and one of three choreographers who will feature in English National Ballet's forthcoming programme of all female work.
The catalyst for the angry demonstrations that led to his departure was the self-immolation of a 26-year-old street vendor called Mohammed Bouazizi in the obscure Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid.
Mr Bouazizi's hometown, Sidi Bouzid, where unemployment pushed 25% before the unrest, suffers an even higher rate now, and joblessness has surged in other countries, too.
Tunisia is more promising, but even if its more cohesive and liberal-minded political elite stay on course, it will take years before real change comes to places such as Sidi Bouzid.
Sidi Bouzid, a small town in Tunisia's unloved interior, is proud of its revolutionary son, whose self-immolation sparked the uprising that brought down the regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
