With twenty-one dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and four extreme sports athletes, Rachid Ouramdane offers a performance that works on the image of the swarm. A horizontal movement joined together with Julius Eastman’s hypnotic music. For several years now, Rachid Ouramdane has been focusing his writing on moving crowds, through works that question community and the place within it that everybody is looking for.

After rallying the Ballet de l’Opéra of Lyon (Tout autour, 2014) and the Ballet of Lorraine (Murmuration, 2017), the choreographer takes on twenty-one performers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre of Geneva, as well as four extreme sports athletes, for a creation where different fields intersect. Outsider works on the image of the swarm and that very instant when the movement’s horizontality is in danger. The work questions the breaking point that a dancer or an athlete can exceed. A choreography around risks of fall and broken lines, conversing with the repetitive music patterns of Julius Eastman, a little-known figure of 1970s New York frenzy and of minimalism.

It acts as a throbbing pulsation that guides the performers’ grouped moves. Like a swarm struggling against the game of lines created by the stage’s volumes and the bright scenography.