By - 4 Mar 2011
"French dancer-choreographer Rachid Ouramdane's multimedia performance installation Loin ... (Far ... ) is a very personal meditation on the nature of identity and the ways in which it is shaped by violence, aggression, war, politics, destruction, and by the legacies of the past we carry with us, especially in our bodies."
By Raewyn Whyte
Read this review on NZHerald.co.nz
"Ouramdane has gathered other people's stories in his quest for
understanding - former soldiers, civilian survivors in Cambodia and
Vietnam, a displaced Eurasian American still trying to make sense
of who he is.
And his own mother tells of his father's experiences as a French
soldier in Algeria, where soldiers on both sides were imprisoned
and repeatedly tortured.
We see their faces close up on screen while their words are,
translated into English as a steady subtitle stream which often
passes too quickly to take in.
We see scenes from their lives - a rice paddy, the crowded
streets of Hanoi, a wild waterfall somewhere in the world, and we
hear many different sounds which travel around the theatre behind
us - an old lady singing in the distance, a group of men conferring
quietly, traffic sounds, a distant storm.
These are fragments only. They are supplemented by a lengthy
poetic text and by the remarkable dancing interspersed amongst the
stories.
The dancing slowly links the fragments to become something
larger, if not exactly cohesive or coherent. Ouramdane's
choreography starts with the simplest of moves - standing,
kneeling, walking, lying on the floor.
Later it echoes his text at times, showing "a man melting from
the inside" and the affects of anaesthesia, amputation,
torture.
Always the movement becomes more complex, culminating in a
shimmering, fluidly rippling, electric, ecstatic torrent which
seems to exorcise the demons and allow him to come to rest, at
peace."
*Loin... (Far...) runs till Saturday
at the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna.