TBI Q&A: Rachid Ouramdane

Experimental French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane talks about his new piece of dance theatre, Loin... (Far...), which explores the misshaping effects foreign invasion and colonisation can have on individuals, families and society.

In this solo work he controls a multi-media set, punctuating video testimonies with an expansive soundscape and lending a physical presence to the show's disembodied voices.

Loin... (Far...) has it's NZ premiere at the Auckland Arts Festival in March.

During what hours of the day do you feel most inspired?

When I am half awake in the morning and the evening, when you lose the control of yourself a bit.

How would a good friend describe your aesthetic or style?

Trying to search poetic ways to explore contemporary identities and the traumas of history without resorting to the brutality of a shout.

What aspect of your creative practice gives you the biggest thrill?

The moment of contact with an audience.

How does your environment affect your work?

By the way that I collect interviews that I recycle in my projects.

Do you like to look at the big picture or focus on the details?

To focus on details always makes you touch a bigger scale.

What's your number one business tip for surviving (and thriving) in the creative industries?

To pay attention and develop the human relationships with the people in this field.

Which of your projects to date has given you the most satisfaction?

“Ordinary witnesses,” my last piece, was quite a full experience artistically and on a human scale. For this piece I worked with people who endured torture in different places of the world. The way they informed me about the meaning of life was intense.

Who or what has inspired you recently?

At the moment, my one year old son

Tell us a bit about your work at the Auckland Arts Festival (who, what, when, why – how!)

I made a long trip to Vietnam and Cambodia in 2007. During a discussion about the violence of the conflicts that shook those countries, I remembered some pages of the military book of my father, who had to go to Indochina 50 years ago. As this discussion went along, because of my French nationality, I could see that I was given the part of the son of an ex-colonist whereas what linked my father to this Indochina was the inheritance of another colonization he had endured in Algeria.

So I wanted to go indepth into that feeling of being a “foreigner” and to question identity (the one people cast on us, the one people build for themselves, which can be social, cultural, created by media …). This work, as all my work, is constructed from testimonies I collected, to try to link individual lives to collective history.  I search for poetic ways in order not to be at the forefront of the documentary.

If you could go back and choose a completely different career path to the one you've chosen, what would it be?

I would have loved to have more complicity with words. To be an author, that could have been another path of life.

What place is always with you, wherever you go?

The land of my parents, Algeria, which I always imagine because I have never been there.

What's the best way to listen to music, and why?

When I am travelling, watching the landscape from the window of a plane or a train. It gives you another version of the reality.

You are given a piece of string, a stick and some fabric. What do you make?

A hammock, because my two last pieces were psychologically hard to make, due to the subjects they are dealing with, and I think I need a bit of rest.

What's the best stress relief advice you've ever been given?

To enjoy it instead of enduring it.

What's great about today?

That more democracies are appearing.

What’s great about the Auckland Arts Festival 2011?

To have a totally new experience because it is my first time in New Zealand.

What’s your big idea for 2011?

To link artistic research with global care.

Further information:

Loin...(Far)...
Rachid Ouramdane
March 3-5
Bruce Mason Centre
Auckland Arts Festival 2011

Presented as part of FranceDanse 2011, four choreographers supported in their Auckland performances by the Institut Francais.