Performance
WHEN
May 12-13, 2023
7:30 PM
WHERE
The Red Theater, The Arts Center
WHO
The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi
Open to the Public
Contemporary dance and extreme athletes inspire gravity-defying mid-air choreography on a towering climbing wall
Through aerial choreography performed by adventurous athletes and artists, choreographer Rachid Ouramdane reveals what these larger-than-life individuals attempt to reach as they seek to escape gravity.
Corps extrêmes brings to life the desire to “dance” in the air using a climbing wall and tightrope. Dancers perform acrobatic feats that convey a sense of flight and a state of weightlessness and suspension, exploring a unique relationship with verticality. The choreography adds to the aspirations of extreme sports enthusiasts including mountain climbers and highliners, in their quest to defy gravity, and risking life and limb every day to probe existential questions and give meaning to their lives in a society where they feel like eternal outsiders.
From time immemorial, experiencing the act of taking flight has had a fantastical power, the air on the skin, the altitude without gravity. Halfway between a child’s dream and the utopia of escaping one’s condition of a human being stuck to the ground, each person confronted with taking flight speaks of a disquieting feeling that sometimes leads to thinking differently about what surrounds us. In Corps extrêmes, Ouramdane focuses on the fascination which is brought on by the notions of taking flight, of being weightless, of gliding…those moments when one leaves the earth such as several extreme sports allow as well as some artistic practices.
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