National Theater, Taipei
March 28, 2025
A big white wall. One of those indoor climbing walls. Above it, stretched the full width of the stage, a highline. That’s the unusual sight that greets the audience as they enter for Rachid Ouramdane’s Corps extrêmes, an hour inspired by desire to “focus on the fascination produced by the notions of flying, weightlessness, suspension, soaring,” and that sees extreme sports paired with acrobatic dance.
The result is something special and quite unique. It’s not so much what the performers do, as remarkable as that is, but how they do it; the ease, grace and overall quality of movement that is brought to everything. Whether climbing, highlining or in the acrobatics, nothing seems an effort. Unlike most circus-dance ensembles, there is very little obvious setting up of ‘tricks.’ And there are no tricks for tricks sake. Everything is always part of a much greater, very artistic, whole.
Photo Pascale Cholette
The wall is immediately transformed into a projection screen, on which we see French highliner (we used to call them tightrope walkers) Nathan Paulin, who holds the world record for the longest highline walk. Jean-Camille Goimard’s video is stunning. On what is strictly called a slackline, Paulin is found high above the breathtaking natural landscape of the very deep Gorges du Verdon in the south of France. He doesn’t just walk. he sits cross-legged and reclines on his thin strip of steel it as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He hangs from it by one arm.
In a long monologue, perhaps slightly too long, we hear him talking about his obsessive passion for the sport, and about conquering fear and finding calm. There’s an almost philosophical, spiritual element to his words. Much the same sentiments are later echoed in a second film that shows Nina Caprez as she climbs a sheer rockface in the gorge alongside Ann Raber Cocheril on stage.
Like Paulin, Caprez is a very small speck in a very giant landscape. Very much connected to nature, which seems to be as much part of the attraction as the thrill (although Caprez in particular does muse on that), she’s significant but insignificant. Bound but unbound.
Photo Pascale Cholette
Ramming home just how real the risks in her chosen sport are, there’s a moment where she slips and falls from the cliff. There’s a cry before her harness leaves her suspended.
When Paulin is joined by Antoine Crétinon on the in-theatre highline, we get to see things for real as, accompanied by his shadow on the wall, he performs much of the same movement. After the other nine cast members appear at the top of the wall, they shimmy down it with the ease of rock lizards. Standing on each other’s shoulders, towers three bodies high, they gaze up at him.
But it’s the acrobatic dancers who really grab the attention. As they soar through the air, thrust and caught by their fellow performers, the level of precision and trust is remarkable. And all with such control too, landings coming with what appeared to be little help from the others. It was quite organic in a way.
Photo Pascale Cholette
When they are propelled from cupped hands towards the wall, they seem to stick as if there’s some sort of powerful hidden Velcro that cannot be seen. Lifts that you might go ‘Wow’ about if done on the floor, are performed while standing on another’s shoulders. Time and again you find yourself musing, ‘How do they do that like that?’
Choreographically, Ouramdane adds to the interest with plenty of changes in dynamic, partnering and patterning.
Perfectly pitched, soaring when it needs to be, calmer elsewhere, Jean-Baptiste Julien’s music further enhances what is a very subtle, thoughtful, reflective, as well as athletic and dramatic piece.
As it blurs the boundaries between circus, dance and sport, Corps extrêmes is like no other. You can argue that it’s not dance. But then define ‘dance.’ It doesn’t tell a story in the sense of an end-to-end narrative, but in another it very much does. It tells that of Paulin and Caprez, for sure. It may not have emotion that reaches across the footlights, but since when did dance have to have that (much Merce Cunningham, anyone?). But it has so much else, not least the beauty of bodies in motion. It is quite riveting.
Corps extrêmes is supported by Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Reflections and was presented as part of the Taiwan International Festival of the Arts (TIFA).