The French theatre production scaling literal and philosophical heights

South China Morning Post

a day ago

Nietzsche once wrote, 'When you gaze long into the void, the void also gazes into you.' Surely he did not imagine swaying on a wire or clinging to a rock face thousands of feet in the air, despite gravity's strongest persuasions. That precarious position is exactly what drives Corps extrêmes. Held in the Xiqu Centre in West Kowloon, far from any gaping abyss, the performance still induces the second-hand vertigo of witnessing humans confront extreme heights.
Punctuated by video projections and spoken word, the show revolves around the reflections of a highliner, an acrobat and a climber as they narrate their journeys, accompanied by visuals of them traversing mountains and canyons in solitude.
American climber Ann Raber and Italian highliner Luca Chiarva star in the production, joined by eight acrobats. Corps extrêmes is the brainchild of director Rachid Ouramdane, who heads the Chaillot National Dance Theater in Paris, France. Named 'one of the best performances of the year' by The New York Times in 2023 and Best International Dance Show by the performing arts platform Recomana this year, the performance is a display of acrobatics and athleticism expressed through modern dance, set to a heady trip-hop soundscape by Jean-Baptiste Julien.
Rachid Ouramdane, head of Paris' Chaillot National Dance Theater, in Corps extrêmes. Photo: Pascale Cholette
I caught Ouramdane and Raber between rehearsals on a Thursday afternoon, before the opening weekend. Ouramdane is French-Algerian, soft-spoken and meticulous, with a quiet presence that can be felt over the flurry of producers and assistants. He is known for combining the disciplines of sports and dance in his productions, such as Mobïus Morphosis, created as part of the Cultural Olympiad of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Raber is similarly quiet, dressed in athletic gear similar to her show attire, with the most formidable shoulders I've ever seen.
Hailing from Houston, Texas, in the United States, Raber has a background in gymnastics and discovered climbing in her mid-20s. Two decades later, she's scaled heights all over the world and is among the oldest women to have climbed a V13 boulder problem in Texas' Hueco Tanks State Park.
What stands out in our conversation and from watching the performance later that weekend was not the eye-watering stunts onstage, nor the lone-hero-against-the-world narrative we so often associate with extreme sports. Raber climbs in the show, yes, but where I really held my breath was when the team was working together, leaping from the climbing wall and human towers to be caught gently by their teammates' arms a split second before they would have hit the floor.
Several stunts in Corps extrêmes cause audible gasps from the audience. Photo: Pascale Cholette
It was in these moments, amid audible gasps from the audience and seeing these performers free dive into space, trusting their teammates to save them, that I realised Corps extrêmes is really about working together; it's about the trust, support and human connection that allows someone such as Raber to climb as high as she does. Ouramdane sums it up, delivered with a casual finality that only the French seem able to pull off: 'You can't fly if there's no one to rescue you.'