Corps extrêmes

In his 2019 piece “Möbius”, Rachid Ouramdane transformed acrobatic lifts performed by Compagnie XY into vertiginous swarms of starlings. In “Corps extrêmes”, created in 2021 for Compagnie de Chaillot, he took this one step further: He invited two athletes to join the team who are used to finding expression in the solitude of the high mountain air: Nina Caprez, Swiss climbing champion and Nathan Paulin, holder of the highline world record and famous for his tightrope walk between the Eiffel Tower and the Palais de Chaillot in 2017. “Corps extrêmes” renders their practices tangible to the audience and reveals the motivation and the philosophy of these extraordinary adventurers. At the same time, the piece shows their fragility and their ability to liberate themselves on this existential search for themselves. Ouramdane reconstructs a climbing wall on the posterior part of the stage as the performers’ launching point on their flights, where they are subjected to rain and wind. In a beautiful natural landscape projected onto a large screen, the performing bodies seem to hover between high-altitude euphoria and the fear of falling.

Rachid Ouramdane has been director of Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse in Paris since 2021. He was born in Nîmes in 1971 to a family shaped by the Algerian War. Raised in a bicultural environment, he soon became aware of the variety of human identities, a topic that became the core element of his artistic search. He has been opening up his projects for people outside the art scene, bringing former boxing champions, popular wrestlers and groups from local communities onto the stage.