Composing Dance: Rachid Ouramdane
Podcast
Rachid Ouramdane likes to say he lives between two mountains: the hill of the Théâtre de Chaillot in Paris, where he has been artistic director and choreographer-in-residence since 2021, and the Chartreuse Mountain range in the French Alps, where he escapes whenever he can. His art, which he considers a form of social activism, gives a voice to marginalized communities, and has also taken on an ecological dimension over the last decade. As a lover of landscapes, both natural and man-made, Ouramdane has drawn inspiration for his choreography by observing swarms of birds and schools of fish.
Lately, he’s turned his gaze towards the heavens, working with athletes, high-liner and climbers who have no fear of heights, creating tableaux of collective flight. For our audio series Composing Dance, the artist details his way of composing movement for groups both big and small, and tells us about his latest work, Contre-nature (Un-natural).
Lately, he’s turned his gaze towards the heavens, working with athletes, high-liner and climbers who have no fear of heights, creating tableaux of collective flight. For our audio series Composing Dance, the artist details his way of composing movement for groups both big and small, and tells us about his latest work, Contre-nature (Un-natural).
Director of Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse since 2021, Rachid Ouramdane discovered dance at the age of 12 through hip hop and went on to take intensive classical and modern dance classes. In the early 1990s, he quit his biology studies and joined the Centre National de danse contemporaine in Angers. As a performer and choreographer, he has worked with the likes of Meg Stuart, Odile Duboc, Hervé Robbe, Alain Buffard, Christian Rizzo, Julie Nioche and Emmanuelle Huynh and more. Rachid Ouramdane’s works are often marked by personal account and intimate experience – children refugees, torture or natural disas¬ter victims, nonprofessional athletes, etc. – from which he creates structured choreography. For his own pieces, commissioned works or practice workshops, Rachid Ouramdane has collaborated with circus artists Company XY, authors Pascal Rambert and Sonia Chiambretto, visual artists Nicolas Floch’ and Mehdi Meddaci as well as musicians Jean-Baptiste Julien and Alexandre Meyer. Since 2021, carrying out an ambitious project focused on diversity and hospitality, he has been president - director of Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse and was appointed Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2022.
