Rachid Ouramdane / National Choreographic Center

There’s the show itself and then there’s what goes on behind the scenes. There’s the light from the spots and the half-light all around it. Side A and side B. There are the movements, not just those that a dancer performs but also all those underlying the performance. “Tordre” opens rather mischievously with the music from “Funny Girl”, William Wyler’s American musical film. Two dancers come charging onto the stage and, as they do so, we smile at the sweeping body beautiful archetypes which lay behind so many of Broadway’s fantasies. This sets up the titular twist as we embark upon another, more intimate and more fragile, body story. This is the story of two performers who have been closely involved with Rachid Ouramdane’s work for a number of years. It is the story of the Lithuanian dancer Lora Juodkaite who, spinning dizzyingly on the spot, has developed her own way of moving which has accompanied her since childhood. It is also the story of the British dancer Annie Hanauer, moving with an articulated prosthetic arm which is at the same time both an extension and an integral part of her body. Each of them, in her own way, has developed a know-how known to them alone and come up with a way of working which has now become consubstantial. With this dual portrait, Ouramdane is probing the delicate place where movement wavers between poetry and testimony… He sets out to achieve the documentary feel which has brought him international popularity with a register of a modest disclosure and a patient and delicate staging of confidences. The atmosphere is all-encompassing and hypnotic, with a listening, contemplative quality… In this piece, Ouramdane has perfected his subtle art of composition and placed the focus as only he knows how – somewhere between implacable strangeness and closeness.

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. He is regularly invited to work on many projects and create for many companies, like Lyon Opera Ballet, Russian company Migrazia during a residence in Siberia for the Intradance project, for the 20th birthday of British Candoco Dance Company with disabled dancers… Since 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. 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 USA. Since2016, Ouramdane direct the National Choreographic Center in Grenoble, together with Yoann Bourgeois.

Annie Hanauer is a dancer performer and teacher. Originally from United States, she lives between the UK and France. She is a graduate of Fine Arts in Dance University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. As member of Candoco Dance Company, Annie taught and played all over the world with pieces of Trisha Brown, Marc Brew, Nigel Charnock, Claire Cunningham, Emanuel Gat, Thomas Hauert, Sarah Michelson, Hofesh Shechter, and at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing and the closing ceremony of Paralympic Games in London, as well as a solo is recently written by Lea Anderson. “Tordre” is her third collaboration with Rachid Ouramdane.

Lora Juodkaite is a choreographer and a dancer born in Lithuania. Since her childhood, she practiced movement gyration. This daily ritual allows her to develop a spinning out of the ordinary. Thereafter, she joined this singular practice within her own work choreographer. She trained in dance at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and experimental Dance Academy Salzburg, which she graduated in 2005. After some experience in film and theater, she join the dance company V. Jankauskas. She also creates many pieces in collaboration with musicians and especially for Lithuanian National Drama Theater. She works with RachidOuramdane on several projects since 2005. Apart her choreographic work, she teaches at the Vilnius Academy of Arts, in Vilnius Kolegium for art and directs the Academic Dance Theatre of Vilnius.