«The  misleadingly sketched-in vocabulary I have been developing for several  years for my work is based on an accumulation of choreographic themes  knit together at very high speed, creating a kind of dancing which is  hard to take in visually and which is therefore a metaphor for life  itself. The dancing reveals the uniqueness of each person onstage and  highlights how we each need to deal on a daily basis in order to find  where we stand relative to others. This dance concentrate invents a  heightened, tight environment in which the relationship between the  individual and the group is constantly changing. Declaring one’s  uniqueness and having the courage to own one’s differences seems to me  to be essential in this time when we are scared by the Other, when he or  she is unfairly stigmatized.

The crisis into which I place these bodies reveals the dancers’  ability to react on a stage where everything is constantly accelerating.  We see a collective intelligence emerging from these protagonists,  bringing solutions to ‘extreme’ situations or moments of chaos, when the  collective only brings us saturation and blockages.

The spontaneity of the dancers’ movements toward each other creates a  sort of concentrate of humanity in which we glimpse fleeting bits of  choreographic themes. It is this material which I try to grasp to invent  my dance, where a shape appears only to be erased and immediately  replaced by another shape, so fast that you are not sure you actually  saw it happen.

The musical work of Jean-Baptiste Julien reinforces this sensation of  overflow and acceleration barrelling through the dancers, creating a  world crisis. Once again I will be trying working through a heterogenous  abundance of actions – to reflect what I believe to the logic of our  social cohesion, our ability to copy with all these differences.» Rachid Ouramdane

Source : Ballet de Lorraine

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/

Bérangère Goossens is a french filmmaker, born in 1979. She studied cinema at university of Paris 8 and started directing documentaries.

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu