It’s a rule of life that dancers can do anything with their bodies. In Rachid Ouramdane’s new work, Outsider, made with the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, they slide across the stage like oil, tumbling and curling like acrobats, swinging one another around like supple dolls. One woman falls and rises like a pendulum across a mass of bodies that gently push her from side to side.
The stage, in Sylvain Giraudeau’s stark design, is crisscrossed with a cat’s cradle of taut climbing wires held on gantries. French-Algerian choreographer Ouramdane’s stroke of magic is to introduce four extreme sport athletes who hang aloft seamlessly in semi-silhouette, their weightlessness contrasting with the gravity-bound dancers beneath. When they walk the tightrope, their arms wobble gently as they seek balance.
