Dancing on the cutting edge

A memorable evening at a dance festival can also mean watching two new dance works, highly different, in two venues of the same theatre complex with two old friends and a good dinner and conversation in-between. That’s what happened to me one Saturday evening in autumn at the Theatre National Populaire (TNP), in Villeurbanne on the outskirts of Lyon, at the 17th edition of La Biennale de la danse where Rachid Ouramdane’s “Tordre” and Olivier Dubois’s “Auguri” were staged. Both were part of Institut Francaise’s “Focus Danse”, which brings together works selected for international producers and programmers.
In his latest work, whose title is literally “Twisted” but is replaced by “Wrought” in Anglophone venues, Ouramdane continued his research with two dancers he has worked with in the past: Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanauer. The former has been practising gyration since her childhood and her spins now have plenty variations. The latter moves in such a way that, from a certain distance, the audience may not notice she has a prosthetic left lower arm. Accordingly, Sylvain Giraudeau created a set design that featured a semi-oval white dance floor and two black rods connected with poles, which could be spun around as well as moved up and down. Lighting designer Stephane Graillot painted this sparse canvas the dark shadows in various angles, all the better to frame the black-clad dancers. 
Earlier in “Tordre”, Juodkaite and Hanauer performed extended solos, the former with some spoken monologues and the latter to Nina Simone’s “Feelings”, as if to not only introduce themselves but also share their inner thoughts. After embracing each other halfway into the work, their duets, frequently heartfelt, showed that the two women shared much in common with each other as well as with us, the audience. 
Ouramdane is co-directing Le Centre Choreographique National de Grenoble with Yoann Bourgeois whose “Celui qui tombe” (“He Who Falls”) was seen at the previous biennale and has since been on tour to many countries. I predict the same for “Tordre”, a uniquely intimate and touching minimalistic work that results from the dancers as much as the choreographer and the designers.
    Later the same evening, Dubois, artistic director of Ballet du Nord, offered the very opposite of intimacy as a whirlwind of movements and human thrust roamed another TNP stage in his “Auguri”, “Augury” or simply “Best wishes” in English. 
To highly energetic electro symphony music by Francois Caffenne and Stephane Magnin, 22 dancers spent almost an hour jumping up and down the two square and two rectangular cubes, also designed by Dubois, running across the stage in different directions, carrying, chasing and even bumping into one another, before collapsing towards the end. This was exactly as Dubois noted in his statement, “To soar, no longer touching the ground. Flying like a bird, an omen for myself,” and finally “He sleeps”. 
Watching this choreographed chaos, the audience was invited to an ancient Greek practice of ornithomancy, reading the future of mankind from the movements of these birds. It’s filled with jubilation but at the same time a glimpse of a more morbid future.

For more on other works by 
Ouramdane and Dubois, visit www.CCN2.fr and www.BalletDuNord.fr.
The writer’s trip was supported by the Biennale de la danse’s press office and the French Embassy in Thailand.