Reverberating Violence, Visibility, and the Dance of Rachid Ouramdane

Abstract

The essay explores how the French-Algerian choreographer, Rachid Ouramdane, absorbs the theme of torture into his works. As a practitioner of documentary dance, Ouramdane uses the testimony of torture victims and their families to generate movement that resonates with the trauma, rather than representing it mimetically. In two works that focus on torture, Loin [Far] of 2008 and Des Témoins ordinaires [Ordinary Witnesses] of 2009, Ourmdane raises questions concerning the limits of violent acts, where they begin and end, and how they create reverberations both in the body and the psyche. The essay follows his choreographic practice, examining how he builds his dances on professional and non-professional dancers to reflect their lived experience. In particular, the essay studies how the movements generated in the context of a response to torture return in other works based on the phenomenon of murmuration, also characterized by the transmission of shaped energy.