Rachid Ouramdane will explore political ideology and torture in two presentations at FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival (photo © Patrick Imbert)
New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
ORDINARY WITNESSES: Tuesday, October 11, $24-$30, 6:30, and Wednesday, October 12, $15, 7:30
WORLD FAIR: Thursday, October 14, and Friday, October 15, $24-$30, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
www.rachidouramdane.com
Paris-based dancer-choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, who founded the L’A company in 2007, will be presenting a pair of fascinating programs at New York Live Arts as part of the “Endurance/Resistance/Inspiration” section of the French Institute Alliance Française’s fifth annual Crossing the Line Festival. On October 11 & 12, Ordinary Witnesses examines torture, memory, and identity in a violent world. Ouramdane, who interviewed victims of torture in putting together the evening-length piece, writes that Ordinary Witnesses takes place “at the edges of civilization and the gateways to barbarity. The instant where people exit humanity to be cast into the jaws of torture.” He continues, “Doing a portrait of people who lived through torture is an attempt to depict the unpresentable. . . . It is about trying to grasp the imagination of those who experienced such atrocities, so that this experience does not remain hushed up. It is also about awareness of history’s repeated violence now that torture seems to be tolerated and even legitimate at the very core of our democracies.” Ouramdane will give a preshow talk on October 11 and participate in a conversation with the PEN American Center’s Larry Siems following the October 12 show. On October 14 & 15, Ouramdane will stage World Fair, an exploration of the human body as it relates to social and political ideology, performed by Ouramdane and multi-instrumentalist Jean-Baptiste Julien, with an artist talk following the October 14 show.
Rachid Ouramdane’s ORDINARY WITNESSES offers an extraordinary look at torture
Update: The son of an Algerian father who was tortured, Rachid Ouramdane has been making the sociopolitical physical in such works as Cover, Discreet Death, and Far . . . , examining memory and identity through multimedia presentations involving progressive movement. On October 11 he and his Paris-based L’A company performed the mesmerizing Ordinary Witnesses at New York Live Arts, part of FIAF’s Crossing the Line interdisciplinary international arts festival. The show begins with a man’s voice detailing his emotions — or lack thereof — as he describes his reaction to having been the victim of torture. He speaks in French, his words translated on the back wall. After several minutes, Lora Juodkaite, Mille Lundt, Jean-Claude Nelson, Georgina Vila-Bruch, and Jean-Baptiste André emerge onto Sylvain Giraudeau’s dark, bare stage, their faces blank as they walk slowly around a rectangular video frame lying flat on the floor and, in one corner, a grid of sixty spotlights that go on and off at various intervals and at different levels of brightness (at times evoking interrogation lights). The dancers occasionally stop, fall to the floor, adopt yogalike poses, and then move on as Jean-Baptiste Julien’s subtle electronic score, including the low buzz of feedback from an onstage electric guitar, hovers ominously above them. At one point a female dancer breaks into a nearly endless twirl, spinning around and around in a dizzying display of agility and sheer breathlessness; watching her, one wonders just how long she can continue, the audience wanting to call out and stop the torture but too amazed to do so. Although it does get repetitive and goes on slightly too long — perhaps echoing the repetitiveness of torture itself — Ordinary Witnesses is an emotionally powerful work that makes its purposes very clear, right from the start. There are still tickets left for the second and final performance on October 12, which will be followed by a discussion between Ouramdane and Larry Siems. Ouramdane will also be presenting his solo work, World Fair, at New York Live Arts October 14-15.