The challenge with Good for..., a piece for four dancers, is how to reveal more generic stories from an autobiographical piece. The solo has the capacity to expose the body more than any other form, while at the same time seeming to be inseparable from the per- former. When the body, or bodies are different, can we truly say that it is the same solo? I wanted to see what the propositions of this first piece would be like, transposed onto other bodies that each have their own story. The presence of Matthieu Doze, Rachid Ouramdane and Christian Rizzo entraps the solo, in the way that they distort each sequence. Their presence prevents the way the dancer identifies with the solo and the solo with the dancer. Good Boy deals with illness and the fragility of our bodies, but, in fact, it is all about showing a singular body whose layers breathe and sweat its own story. It is not, however, an autobiography in dis- guise, and it is definitely not a pile of biographies together. Good for... takes each person’s differences and shifts the political and social issues of the initial solo toward the question of the community and how hard it is to depict. Multiplying the number of dancers present opens up so many avenues for the “re-presentation” of Good Boy’s choreographic and social questions. It shows, however, a range of singularities rather than an undivided community, whether reconciled or unreconciled.

A particular experiment can give rise to surprises. Good Boy bordered on the tragic, Good for... unintentionally replaced it with a fun, ironic approach. We could say that we went from the corps-je to the corps-jeu. The need for a counterpoint from each dancer tilted the whole project in the direction of amused kinship.

During our first performance at the Crestet art center, the venue’s architecture led us to establish a very specific visual and elastic rapport. The L-shaped space of the galleries where we were dancing, and the bay windows, or, more to the point, the windows that separated us from the audience standing in the square garden, rein- forced the distance and separation between the audience and the performers, forcing them to choose one dancer to watch and to own that choice. The space allowed for a play between the visible and the non-visible, for the multiplication and the reduction of our presences. Performing in a White Cube* also fostered a certain distance with the subject.

Exploring other possibilities in the spaces we performed in meant we had to work things out in advance. It forced us to rethink the components of the initial piece as a new phase, in order to better deactivate what was built during the previous one. We really emphasized the sounds our bodies produced, all the splashes and the booms. We also focused on each dancer’s capacity to access their feminine side, with heels but no frills (we remained in the White Cube*).

Good boys became bad boys and vice versa. Good boys go to heaven, bad boys go everywhere.
And make no fuss.
Alain Buffard

* “White Cube” is a term first coined by the art critic Brian O’Doherty in 1976, for an open white space with no pre-established signs.
It worked well with avant-gardist experiments and became an art gallery paradigm. 

Alain Buffard starts dancing in 1978 with Alwin Nikolaïs at the Centre national de danse contemporaine in Angers. He dances in several productions from Brigitte Farges and Daniel Larrieu, as well as Régine Chopinot, Philippe Decouflé. He realizes a choreography for two plays with Marie-Christine Georghiu, accompanied by the Rita Mitsuko rock group, a first solo "Bleu nuit" in 1988, and Wagner's Master singers of Nuremberg staged by Claude Régy in 1989.

While carrying on his career of dancer, he works as an assistant in Anne de Villepoix 's Gallery for exhibitions on R. Zaugg, Fischli & Weiss, Chris Burden and V. Acconci. At the same time, he is a correspondent for two Norwegian daily papers, for which he covers visual arts events in France. He stops dancing between 1991 and 1996. In 1996 he makes two decisive meetings : one with Yvonne Rainer on the occasion of the updating of her play Continuous Project ­ Altered Daily by the Albrecht KNUST Quatuor, and another one with Anna Haplrin, with whom he is working as the winner of the "Villa Medicis - hors les murs" prize.

In January 1998 he creates "Good boy", his second solo, and then makes in 1999 two trios INtime / EXtime and MORE et encore. "Tout va bien" is premiered in June 2010 at Festival Montpellier Danse and his last piece "Baron Samedi" is created in April 2012 at the Théâtre de Nîmes where he was an associated artist for both seasons 2010-2011 and 2011-2012.

He also realized "My lunch with Anna", a film with Anna Halprin in California with the help of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France and le Fresnoy national studio for contemporary arts, where he was associated artist during the season 2004-2005.

Source: Alain Buffard 's website

Rachid Ouramdane has been creating art projects since 1995.
He was an Associate Artist at the Theâtre de la ville in Paris from 2010 to 2015 and at the Bonlieu from 2005 to 2015 Theater in Annecy, France.

He is regularly invited to work on many collaborations: with the Lyon Opera Ballet (Superstars, 2006; All around, 2014); for the dancers of the Russian company Migrazia during a residence in Siberia for the Intradance project (Russia) (Borscheviks... a true story..., 2010); and for the 20th birthday of Candoco Dance Company (UK) with disabled dancers (Looking back, 2011).

Since Rachid Ouramdane founded L’A dance company, his work has been based on a meticulous collection of evidence, in collaboration with filmmakers or authors.

So he employs the art of dance to contribute to social debates through choreographic pieces that develop a poetics of testimony. In his recent work, he has explored the principles of writing for a big group of dancers.

Alongside his creative projects, Ouramdane is working to enhance learning and exchange through the management of international workshops for artistic research in France, Romania, Netherlands, Brazil, and the United States.

Since 2016, Rachid Ouramdane direct the CCN2-Centre Chorégraphique National de Grenoble with Yoann Bourgeois.

Source : Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble

More information :

http://www.ccn2.fr/