Backstage/Onstage at REF 2024. Outsider

The Romaeuropa Festival participation for me starts today in a big way.
I know that OUTSIDER is a dance performance choreographed by Frenchman Rachid Ouramdane and performed by the Grand Theatre Ballet of Geneva. I know it will also feature four tightrope walkers, including record-breaking highliner athlete Nathan Paulin. I also know that Ouramdane, since 2019, has been studying starling behavior.
When I arrive, the stands are still filling up but the Cavea, nestled between Renzo Piano’s three lead beetles, is already charged with potential energy. The stage set-up is extremely simple: a backlit curtain at the bottom and contrasting black ropes crisscrossing its airspace. The arrangement of the ropes against a light background reminds me of that of radio antenna cables, the analog matrix of communication, which in this context abandons the ugliness typical of such constructions to become scenography and sculpture.

The lights finally go down, and on stage, one after another, a series of dancing figures follow one another accompanied by the pressing piano of Julius Eastman, a 1970s American minimalist composer. The dancers are dressed in variations of the same jumpsuit that alternates black with flesh color, for an apparent nod to Beach Birds by Merce Cunningham.
The dancers run, cross and shuffle across the stage. They are alone and then together. They lift each other in equal spirit, in a collective effort aimed at achieving a common and simultaneous goal: the sky.
In their swirling, incessant gestures I find there is the cruelty and magnificence of the rituals of the natural world, and I find it impressive how Ouramdane has managed to translate so unequivocally the movements of the starlings, to such an extent that even a layman like me was able to enjoy the performance and grasp its references almost immediately.

Ma il vero punto di svolta dello spettacolo avviene poco prima della metà, quando entrano in scena i quattro tightrope walkers. The curtain lighting changes and becomes dim, the music stops for a few minutes: the acrobats, clinging to the ropes with all their limbs, rise with measured slowness to a standing position. The performers walk unsteadily on the ropes, their paths overlapping without ever crossing. The search for balance is constant. No acrobatics occur, but the audience cannot help but hold its breath.
The varying pattern of the light behind the background makes the figures on stage seem constantly backlit, to spontaneously highlight the regular, geometric shapes the bodies take you can tell it’s them, but also the incessant tension in their muscles.
When the “terrestrial” dancers also re-enter the stage, the stage becomes crowded and shows us the gradual and harmonious meeting of the two worlds. I witness, finally, the cathartic reconciliation of a community.
The audience applauds at length, some are standing. The performance is over.

At this point I wonder: why the title OUTSIDER Surely Eastman, when he chose to deal with uncomfortable issues, became an outsider and died unknown to most, homeless and plagued by addiction. Nathan Paulin, as he traverses Paris seventy meters above the ground, is an outsider. The audience, strangers trying to decipher the dance of starlings, becomes outsiders.
The definition of this word comes from the sporting sphere and is: anyone who has a chance to win, despite not being among the favorites.
The title, in this sense, becomes an ode to diversity, but more importantly an invitation to be an Outsider while remaining within the collective. Those who find themselves on the margin are able, in fact, to observe a unique and integral world from the privileged perspective of those who are far away and thus are able to take an open and neutral gaze. And where can this margin be located if not high above us?