Cancelled  
 because of lack of suitable venue in Istanbul   

A journey is often the opportunity to revisit, the moment to take stock of one's identity or rather one's identities. Those we have inherited, those we embody in the eyes of others and those we project to ourselves, that we try to emancipate. Whether national, economic, ethnic, minority, cultural, sexual, psychological or affective, a journey brings into question all of these layers of identity, which form new configurations throughout our movements. The different faces we have often result from a negotiation between the legacy of the past and the identity that is being constructed in the present. It is during these movements that the feeling of being a FOREIGNER appears. Our assumed differences and our poor understanding of elsewhere create a place where we can rethink our perceptions. This crossroads of thought is the axis around which I have constructed this choreographic project.

During a recent journey to Vietnam and to Cambodia, I discovered a new way to explore this feeling of being a foreigner. In a discussion about the violence of the conflicts that have torn these countries apart, I remembered the pages of my father's military papers; my father, who was made to crush this Indochina of earlier times. As the discussion progressed, because of my French nationality, I realized that I was considered the son of a colonialist, even though what linked my father to Indochina was the legacy of another colonisation, that to his country, Algeria. Once again during this conversation, it struck me that the upheavals and the devastation caused by the violence of armed conflict should lead us to reflect upon the image of the foreigner in many areas of the world. In what way does the violence of armed conflict make us foreign? What sensitivity is born out of this violence? These are the questions addressed in this itinerant project; a project that will trace the steps of a journey made more than 50 years ago.

Rachid Ouramdane

Conception and performance: Rachid Ouramdane | Music : Alexandre Meyer | Video: Aldo Lee | Lights : Pierre Leblanc |  Costume and make up: La Bourette | Set : Sylvain Giraudeau | Realisation assistant : Erell Melscoët | Stage management and sound : Sylvain Giraudeau | Video management : Jenny Teng | Lighting management : Stéphane Graillot | Production L'A. Coproduction: Théâtre de la ville à Paris, Bonlieu, scène nationale d'Annecy, Biennale de la danse de Lyon | With the help of:  Le Fanal, scène nationale de Saint-Nazaire for the residency of création | With the support of: Cultures France, Wonderful district à Hô-chi-minh - Vietnam, de L'Ambassade de France au Vietnam - L'Espace, Centre culturel à Hanoï et le service de coopération et d'action culturelle à Hô-Chi-Minh and the Théâtre 2 Gennevilliers.

Rachid Ouramdane created 3 avenue de l'espérance, Des gens de passage and Les absents ont toujours tort (1996-1999), and between 1999 and 2000, worked on the project Aux bords des métaphores, which portrayed a ‘videographically modified body', questioning the change in our perception of intimacy juxtaposed with the proliferation of images in our daily life. In 2001, he created De Arbitre à Zébra, in collaboration with the community of boxers and wrestlers of the city of Reims, in the framework of the company's residency at the Manège de Reims from 2000 to 2004. The nature of Ouramdane's interdisciplinary projects has led to collaboration with other cultural bodies such as the FRAC Champagne Ardennes, giving life to projects at the crossroads of visual arts and dance, such as Structure Multifonction created with Christian Rizzo and Nicolas Floch in 2001.

In 2002, he proposed a vocal performance Face cachée, then he created the project +ou - là which examined the film-television genesis of our current criteria for reading the representations that surround us. It also probed the deadliness underlying most of the icons that make up our collective imagination. The same year, he created with Christian Rizzo the solo Skull*cult  and from 2003 to 2005, he worked on a collective project, A l'oeil nu, which dealt with locating and creating links between public space and artistic gestures, proposing a re-reading of the structures embedded in our cinematographic memory, by way of an interplay of echoes.

Numerous projects have grappled with the construction of contemporary identities enmeshed with the modernization of our societies, and with the reconfiguration caused by geo-cultural upheaval. This inquiry was sharpened for the 2004 solo Les morts pudiques, a sort of self-portrait made out of history-fragments found on the net. This solo marked the beginning of a series of solo pieces within various shows. Following several work residencies in Brazil, Ouramdane created Cover, consisting of four solos for Brazilian artists. As a guest artist at the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon, he created Superstars consisting of seven solos. In 2006, he created Un garçon debout, a solo show performed by writer/director Pascal Rambert.

In 2007, his show Surface de réparation for eight young athletes from Gennevilliers, tackles the sports gesture in order to reveal the underlying intimacy that connects these teenagers to their sport. In 2007, he traveled a lot to Vietnam in the footsteps of his father's military route during the Indochina war. Then he created Far... (Loin... French title) in 2008 with fragments of texts and interviews he collected diring his travels. He fellows his research on memory and violence in a new project Ordinary witnesses in which he made interview of people who had to endure torture and physical violence. It will be premiered at th end of May 2009 in Bonlieu Scène Nationale d'Annecy.

(shortened from) Rosita Boisseau