With three projects and a number of public engagements, you are the artist partner of this 78th edition. How did you choose the shows you’re presenting? What was the common thread of this “partnership”?
I had many conversations with Tiago Rodrigues about the presence of the Tanztheater Wuppertal at the Festival d’Avignon, fifty years after its founding and fourteen after the passing of Pina Bausch, its legendary founder. Bringing this company—of which I have been the director since 2022—to the Festival is no small matter! We quickly decided to create broader spaces for encounters and debates that would not solely focus on my work or that of Pina Bausch. It is more about exchanging ideas on themes that resonate with the shows presented, in line with the philosophy of the Festival d’Avignon: a Festival which questions our fundamentals while looking at the future. In a way, that’s what this programme is all about. With Forever, based on Café Müller, I wonder how to bring a major show of the contemporary repertoire into the future. Liberté Cathédrale, my first creation for the Tanztheater Wuppertal, is about the present of the company. As for CERCLES, which isn’t so much a show as an open research space, it allows me to explore what the future of the company might be. With those three shows, past, present, and future intertwine. In a sense, this programme is a game I play with time.
You are not reviving Café Müller, which is certainly Pina Bausch’s most emblematic show: you are transforming it into a choreographic installation, a living laboratory. Can you tell us more about the genesis of Forever?
When I was appointed director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, the company had programmed Café Müller for the 2023 season. The revival was to be done without me, helmed by Héléna Pikon and Barbara Kaufmann, with a whole new cast, since no one in the current company had ever performed it. But I ended up getting involved. I first started by attending rehearsals in the legendary cinema hall Pina Bausch turned into a studio, and which we still use. It has a very special atmosphere. I loved being there and watching the dancers make that dance theirs. I felt very close to Pina Bausch then. That’s when I noticed the strong correlation between the repeated movements of the famous revolving door that dominates the back of the stage and those of the performers who were tirelessly rehearsing the movements, the sequences. I thought there was a meaning to explore there, a meaning all the more profound because the show seems to have no real beginning or end: when it begins on stage, it feels as if the dance had already started offstage. And it doesn’t end in a typical way, it’s not the end of a story. From a certain point of view, it feels like it could go on forever! Symbolically, that’s what we’re trying to do with the company. We’re trying to dance again when neither Pina, Malou Airaudo, or Dominique Mercy are here to dance with us. One might think it almost impossible, especially without notation, or based only on simple recordings, and yet we keep dancing this dance. We try to dance forever and ever. Watching those rehearsals, I felt that there was something worth doing there, with this idea of a Café Müller that would never stop. It asks fundamental questions—from a choreographic point of view—about the activation of memory, the reading of a work that has been recontextualised, about what could be the fundamental essence of a performance. For Forever, I remembered that the show had gone through different versions, including one performed without sets, like in Hamburg or Nancy. I started with that naked version, keeping only the tables and chairs. In a way, I’m picturing a studio version, without the original costumes or lighting. The whole thing lasts about 7 hours and gives the audience the opportunity to attend every day a series of performances, each with a different cast, some of which include dancers who worked with Pina Bausch for a long time, like Nazareth Panadero or Jean Laurent Sasportes, who honour us with their presence specifically for the Festival d’Avignon. Just as the seating arrangements allow spectators to change their perspective throughout the event, the successive performances are conceived as so many variations: some abandon the original costumes, others play with mixing dancers of different ages. There are also moments where we address the audience directly, especially by reading texts about the show. Then there are more intimate sequences, during which dancers who have historically performed the show call on their memory in the present by improvising or simply moving through the space. I also invited Julien Ferranti, who dances in Liberté Cathédrale, to sing a cappella the Purcell arias featured in the play. I have left ample room for silence. The lighting was conceived to create an immersive atmosphere, while the proximity to the dancers in action offers an intense and intimate experience—the goal being to immerse the spectators in a sort of imaginary artist’s workshop. The whole performance lasts seven hours, but we recommend spectators stay for two hours to grasp the essence of the project and form a memory of the original show based on the emotions it conveys to us today.
Tell us about the dancers, who make up four different casts. How did you choose them?
The cast is somewhat reflective of the project itself: it multiplies perspectives. Some of the dancers are already members of the company, either as guest artists or permanent members. Others joined only recently. There is no hierarchy between the different casts; no first, second, or third choice. It’s not about who can dance like Pina Bausch, Dominique Mercy, or Nazareth Panadero. I’m not interested in a quest for resemblance. Rather, to find each cast, I tried to find a way to bring them together. One shouldn’t forget that “Café Müller” is a show about desire, about the failure of desire, constructed around couples who form and then dissolve, who look for each other; men and women who come together or fail to find each other. This is all the more impactful because the role originated by Pina Bausch should be danced with one’s eyes closed. So she has to orient herself differently, guided by her emotions, by her desire. This creates a sort of inherent tension in the show which I have always found fascinating, and which I have tried to preserve as much as possible.
You’re working on a show you didn’t create, are directing a company you didn’t found… How did you approach what to many seems like a real challenge?
Like an opportunity! This project allowed me to take the pulse of the company while at the same time bringing a new perspective. It also gave me time to think about what its future could be, between creation and repertoire. But I feel a close connection with what I’ve been doing until now. I also had the chance to dance Nijinsky’s “The Faun”, or pieces by Isadora Duncan that were given to me by Élisabeth Schwartz, or to improvise with Steve Paxton. When I danced for Odile Duboc, I was also working on my own shows. So I understand what the company is going through today. The dancers need to be seen, watched, to feel supported. And that’s what I am trying to do. I think that’s why they called me: to stabilise without stultifying, to let the memory of Pina Bausch live on, to revive emotions but also create new ones.
Interview conducted in January 2024 and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach