Rachid Ouramdane is used to working on transdisciplinary projects. Since April 2021 director of France’s Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse, he will be taking on the dancers of the Geneva Ballet for a La Plage special edition. A balancing act, not after perfection but the mastery of the right gesture, here he is mixing extreme athletics with the counterpoint of a choreographed group, extending the power of all and sundry through the crossing of their personalities. Using the idiom of the swarm, the cloud, the horizontality of movement, Ouramdane is fascinated by the moment of the fall, when a line breaks… or almost. Expect these entangled lines in the scenography and, immaterially, in the music. The compositions for four pianos by the American composer Julius Eastman will be brought out of oblivion for this occasion. A marginal – or marginalised? – and mysterious figure of the New York minimalist scene, Eastman was politically actice, a figure of queer culture and a solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: during the winter of 1981-82, he was evicted from his flat by the police, who destroyed most of his belongings, including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990 on the streets of Buffalo after years of vagrancy.