Biography
Rachid Ouramdane was born in Nîmes, France, in 1971. He discovered dance aged 12 through hip hop and embraced this movement, which spread fast in the 1980s and ‘90s, rooted in housing-project culture and acting as a vehicle for physical and political emancipation. He also attended intensive classical and modern dance classes. In the early ‘90s, he gave up studying biology and devoted himself to dance, enrolling at the National Centre for Contemporary Dance (CNDC) in Angers. As a performer and choreographer, he undertook multiple collaborations with artists such as Meg Stuart, Odile Duboc, Hervé Robbe, Alain Buffard, Christian Rizzo, Julie Nioche and Emmanuelle Huynh. Ouramdane’s creations often draw on testimony and intimate experience (child refugees, victims of torture and natural disasters, amateur sportspeople…) which he weaves into structured choreography. Across his self-initiated work, commissions and practice workshops, Ouramdane collaborates with circus artists (Compagnie XY), writers (Pascal Rambert, Sonia Chiambretto), visual artists (Nicolas Floch’, Mehdi Meddaci) and musicians (Jean-Baptiste Julien, Alexandre Meyer). Since 2021, Rachid Ouramdane has been chairman and director of Chaillot – Théâtre National de la Danse, where he is leading an ambitious project built around diversity and hospitality. In keeping with his open-to-the-world mindset, and working where disciplines intersect, he has chosen a diverse array of associate artists: Gisèle Vienne, Nacera Belaza, Aurélie Charon, Fanny de Chaillé, Dorothée Munyaneza, Compagnie XY, François Chaignaud, Faustin Linyekula and Kery James. He was named an Officer of France’s Order of Arts and Letters in May 2022.