Rachid Ouramdane grew up in a household scarred by the Algerian War. This story of violence and exile would haunt several pieces of the choreographer. Having a dual heritage, he soon caught on to the multiple nature of identity, which was to be a central part of his research.
In the early 90s, Ouramdane dropped his science studies. His deep knowledge of live beings could have led him to a career as a biologist, but he settled instead on dance, a performance art he discovered at age 12 through hip hop. He pulled from this urban culture the idea of an art engaged in public spaces. Building up his creative career from the school of life and the art life, he consistently maintains a connection and tension between the biographical dimension, aesthetic considerations and social issues.
Ouramdane cultivates the art of community in which sentient and wholehearted interactions require questioning all kinds of prejudice. He has led a myriad of projects at the edges of dance and documentary film, meticulously collating firsthand accounts in collaboration with documentary filmmakers. After the 2005 riots, he put together a puzzle of intimate and modest profiles of inner-city youths in Paris. Many of his pieces result from trips and encounters, such as Loin… for which he met Vietnamese exiles back in their country. He met with people who endured torture in Brazil (Des témoins ordinaires), as well as climate refugees reeling from disasters in the Sichuan and Yunan regions of China. (Sfumato).
Each project provides an opportunity to build support for these beleaguered people with local associations. His pieces regularly give a voice to minorities, people whose experiences educate us about particular realities of the world. In 2018, he reached out to child protection, the Department of Education and multiple administrative offices to take action for migrant children and improve their day-to-day life through art practices. With them, he created the show Franchir la nuit. On stage, he pursues a poetics of the personal account and streamlined movement that is almost minimalist and constantly interacting with the environment, as his stage installations attest.
In 2021, the choreographer took over as director of Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse and made it into the theater of diversity and hospitality, increasingly devoted to building human interactions and bringing dance to unexpected places.
In recent years, he has created dance pieces for moving crowds with major international ballet ensembles, including Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Candoco Dance Company, Moscow City Ballet, le collectif XY, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, Maîtrise de Radio France, etc. With those three entities, he created Möbius Morphosis for the Panthéon in Paris, with a music by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, from the group AIR.
In March 2022, he was honored as an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
