For its fifth edition, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef &amp; Arpels Festival returns to London with an ever-diverse selection of companies and artists. Including Franco-Algerian choreographer Rachid Ourandame, director of Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse since 2021.

The Dance Reflections by Van Cleef &amp; Arpels Festival directed by Serge Laurent returns to London for its fifth edition, after its debut in the British capital in 22 and the subsequent stages in Hong Kong, New York, Kyoto. With an engaging program of workshops and shows on stage until April 8 that lines up very different performances, from three works by Balanchine interpreted by the Royal Ballet to the new “Close Up” by Noé Soulier to “Hagay Dreaming”, a combination of tribal legends from the Truku culture of Taiwan with science fiction, to “We wear our wheels with pride” by Robyn Orlin, which evokes the Zulu rickshaws of her childhood… Among the most anticipated performances is “Outsider”, by the Franco-Algerian choreographer Rachid Ouramdane , director of the Théâtre National de la Danse de Chaillot since 2021, with the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Geneve and four highliners, on stage at the Sadler&#39;s Wells theater on March 26 and 27. L&#39;OFFICIEL HOMMES ITALIA: Let&#39;s start with “Outsider”. RACHID OURAMDANE: I made an aerial choreography, with people flying in the air, an opportunity to bring together artists who support each other to do things they couldn&#39;t do alone. The dancers are joined by highliners, in an interaction between dance and extreme sports that I started working on years ago, a &nbsp; practice that is gradually becoming more precise, in particular the musical quality of the gesture has become more precise. When I started working with athletes and acrobats, they concentrated a lot, too much, &nbsp; on the virtuosity of the movement and they didn&#39;t care about its beauty and musical quality, but only about being able to actually do it because it required a lot of strength, taking on a great risk. But gradually they became more confident, also because I preferred to reduce the risk to make them concentrate on the choreographic dimension. The music is by Julius Eastman, a composer who comes from repetitive music like Steve Reich or Philip Glass, who died in the nineties. He was an activist for blacks in the United States and for the gay community, but he was not recognized for his work, to the point of dying on the street, homeless. Much of his work has been lost even if attempts have been made to recover it in the music archives and to rewrite what had been recorded. His music is an ambient music modulated by repetitive action , and it was very beautiful to see how the precision of Julius Eastman&#39;s music could embrace the precision of the dancers.

Photo Gregory Batardon (Courtesy Van Cleef & Arpels)

LOHI: How did you discover his music? RO: It happened by chance, actually, because I usually work with the composer Jean-Baptiste Julien, who comes from this same musical tradition, minimal music. I told him about a project I had for the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and he suggested I listen to Eastman&#39;s music, because in his opinion it was perfect for dance, but had never been choreographed. I liked it immediately, it&#39;s a kind of musical landscape, the emotions fluctuate, you go from a very dark atmosphere to a very bright one only thanks to four pianos playing at the same time and so to speak &quot;sailing&quot; one inside the other . The discovery of Eastman excited me because I have been working on vulnerability for many years, I like to stage people&#39;s fragility. Highliners, those who practice extreme sports, are not crazy people who play with life and death, but the opposite. They really focus on who they are and their limits, but they always push themselves further, opening the doors to everyone&#39;s possibilities. LOHI: How do you select the performers? RO: When Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the director of the corps de ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, contacted me, he asked me: how would you work with the company? And how would you connect your work to the environment beyond the world of ballet? I told him that Geneva is surrounded by mountains, and that I know many world-class highliners. I am used to working with Nathan Paulin, the tightrope walker famous for walking on a tightrope between the Eiffel Tower and the Chaillot Theatre and in Rio between the Pao de Açúcar and the beach. Nathan lives near Geneva, about 40 kilometers away, maybe 30. So I said to Larbi: maybe this time I won&#39;t go to a care facility, as I am used to doing when I work with refugees. I think it is important to connect with this landscape environment and with the people who are involved in its deep nature. For the spectator, watching “Outsider” is like watching a crowd of birds moving in all directions. It was Nathan who suggested the other highliners to me, some come from the circus, others are people who develop this practice as a sport. LOHI: How long does it usually take you to make a show? RO: Two months, but spread out over a year. There is always a moment when you discover the company, you discover the artist , and then I need time to adapt, and I also like to give space to intuitions. For me the studio, during rehearsals, is the place of the accident, in the sense of a place where something unexpected happens.

LOHI: You were talking about refugees before, you worked with children (“Franchir la nuit” from 2018), why did you decide to involve them? RO: For many years in the past what moved me as an artist was anger. When I felt something, when I witnessed something that made me angry, I chose to look at it through another point of view. I&#39;ll give you the example of migrant children. I was tired of seeing how much people talked about migrants and not about children. And that&#39;s why I started saying: &quot;Okay, in all the cities we go to, we do workshops with them, we put them in contact with all the children&quot;... And of course, when you work with refugees, you meet other associations that support them, you start hearing about climate refugees and you work with them, and it creates a sort of avalanche effect. I live in the mountains, I&#39;m surrounded by people who practice extreme sports and have a deep philosophy of life, based on a tremendous respect for nature and the environment . And that&#39;s what I wanted to share, and they often replied that they didn&#39;t understand why I wanted to push them to confront themselves with classical art. Building complicity takes time, but little by little people realize they have things to say, so much to share. I think the artist&#39;s job is to connect them, to put them in touch. LOHI: What does the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef &amp; Arpels Festival mean to you? RO: I have known Serge Laurent for many years, and I appreciate the vision that led him to analyze each time the city where the new edition of this itinerant festival takes place, and to compose a specific program for the city. Attending a festival that brings together different aesthetics and transports them from one place to another is something truly unique, especially in today&#39;s context, where we see the world closing more and more in new confines every day. LOHI: How do you see your role as director of Chaillot? RO: Chaillot is a very important institution, it is the place where the United Nations proclaimed in 1948 the universal declaration of human rights. And it is here that Jean Villard&#39;s Théâtre National Populaire was born. It represents a huge tradition of art and democracy, of fighting for art , of fighting for rights. And it is also an iconic place to bring people together, like during the Olympic Games. For me, it is important that Chaillot &nbsp; embodies the diversity of aesthetics , of culture, that is not only the National Theatre of Dance, but also the National Theatre of diversity, hospitality and inclusion . Dance is everywhere, on the street, at parties, in the hospital because it helps in the medical field. It is in social networks, on TikTok. And I think that Chaillot, as a national dance theatre, should be the place of all these cultures of dance. That is why we organize an Electro Dance Championship, but at the same time we also host established companies, such as Angelin Preljocaj or the Batsheva Dance Company.

LOHI: What have been your career-defining moments? RO: The early period between Paris and New York, in the 90s , when I came into contact with a very broad dance movement, with many references, with a deep heritage, which combined with my background as the son of refugees led me to clarify the subjects I wanted to focus on, starting with vulnerable people. A process that began in 2004, with “Le Morts pudiques”, a tribute to Roland Petit’s “Le jeune homme et la mort” combined with what was happening at the time, the young Muslim kamikazes, the suicides in Japan, the Goth aesthetic in the United States. It was a turning point, suddenly I had the feeling that who I was as a person, with my cultural heritage, and everything I had learned as an artist in France and the United States, really began to mix. The second very important moment happened when I was 39: I was a dancer, I was full of projects and I had to face a blood cancer that I still have, but now I&#39;m fine, I&#39;ve been living with it since then. But for two or three years I didn&#39;t know what I had and what would happen. My body was very fragile and I couldn&#39;t use it anymore. I was always tired, but I could work with others. It could have been a period &nbsp; sad and depressing, but at the same time it was an opportunity , because it allowed me to go further by working with all those artists, all those people that otherwise I would never have met. Before I related to dancers like me, and suddenly I started working with the elderly, I started working with athletes, with acrobats, with wrestlers, with former cabaret stars, with boxers. LOHI: Are you working on a new show? RO: In the last few years I have done many site-specific choreographies for imposing architectures, such as “Mobius Morphosis” at the Panthéon in Paris with the Ballet de l’ Opéra de Lyon and the acrobats’ collective XY, more than 70 artists on stage and an interesting electronic score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, the co-founder of AIR, starting from the theme of the impressive concentrations of flocks of birds that can be seen in nature. I am currently doing a choreography for the Grand Palais in Paris. Chaillot and the Grand Palais were built for the Universal Exhibition and every time I am in these spaces, I see the enormous imagination of those who wanted them then, the ambition they had for art , architecture , the city. The premiere of “Vertige” will be in Paris on June 6th, the audience will be lying under the dome and the show will be an aerial choreography for highliners, including Nathan Paulin, with music by Christophe Chassol.

Let's Dance: Rachid Ourandame at Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival

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