Review: Rachid Ouramdane's (Loin....) @ NAC

Last night I witnessed my first performance where the audience booed a professional dance performance at Canada's capital arts institution, the National Arts Centre - and I can't say it wasn't entirely undeserved.

The 55-minute long programme addressed the issue of torture and its effect on families, memories and cultural identity. It travels from Algeria to Vietnam and America. From a purely information point of view, it was interesting. Artistically, it was stunted. The performance incorporated a lot of media but was really a mish-mash of half-baked ideas and soundbites: spoken word, interviews and soundtracks on film. The coolest feature was the rotating loudspeakers on stage. The problem is that the audience was there to see dance, not a movie. The lame, repetitive movements contained contrast but were not overly original or lead to progression. In fact, the constant picking up of microphones or clicking foot pedals was distracting, but not as distracting as the subtitles that accompanied the quick and monotone recitation of poetry.

The statement the choreographer, Rachid Ouramdane, was trying to make was not best executed, perhaps, with a single person on stage, either. Lines and character were not well-defined. One audience member commented that the accompanying film provided some momentary relief from the movement on stage with its backdrops of landscapes and faces, but in doing so detracted from the point of assembling at the Studio: to watch great contemporary dance, which this piece certainly was not, despite considerable investment by the French government and others.