Rachid Ouramdane & le Ballet de l'Opéra de Tunis Tenir le temps

With Tenir le temps, which premiered in 2015, Rachid Ouramdane presents a dance piece for 16 dancers – restaged here 11 years later for Ballet de l’Opéra de Tunis – centered on the group, collective movement and synchronization. In an almost abstract form, the choreographer explores crowd dynamics and how individuals live together in a common space in both harmony and tension. The stage becomes a place for experimenting with peaceful coexistence where constantly moving bodies seem to search for a precarious balance of unison and disorder. Repetition, shifts, fleeting or recurring interactions make for a continuous and hypnotic flow where each movement seems to respond to a quiet urgency: to keep going, together, despite differences.

A contemporary ballet of instability

With no explicit narrative, Tenir le temps reads like a metaphor of the contemporary world where individuals must continually accommodate, cross, brush past and sometimes ignore each other. The pervasive and pulsing electronic music works like a subterranean force that drives the performers’ movements and induces a collective trance.

A polished and fluid choreographic language
Ouramdane delivers a well-constructed piece with geometric dance patterns that still allow the sensibility of each performer to come through. The dancers, both anonymous and singular, form an ever-shifting living matter. They let us see a world of constant fragility that yet brings out beauty in shared movement.

Tenir le temps is a captivating, almost meditative piece that interrogates our relationship to the group, time and how we inhabit the world as a collective. A moment of reflection where dance becomes a universal language of resistance and connection.

Also, the piece represents a turning point in Ouramdane’s creative journey, after dedicating part of his career to producing pieces at the edges of dance and intimist testimony. Starting from Tenir le temps and Tout autour – a piece from the same period created for Ballet national de l’Opéra de Lyon, he has built up more abstract works for large dance ensembles. 

 

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