The Cour d’honneur. How did you respond to the invitation to create a show there for the 77th edition?
I’d been dreaming for a few years of the cloître des Célestins or the cloître des Carmes, even of La FabricA, but the mythical heart of the Festival was a hope that remained much further away, almost intangible. To be asked to create a show for it was therefore a great surprise. Of course, a creation is always the result of desires and ideas which have matured for years, which I collect as little notes and which are only waiting to materialise. This invitation led to this blossoming and to the start of the work, independently of any deadline or other institutional constraint. I pay close attention to the creative process, the birth of a show is a gesture gifted to the audience. The Cour d’honneur is a legendary venue, it holds traces of its history as well as of the shows that once inhabited it. It’s a place teeming with imagination, which met an idea I’d kept inside for a long time: to create a mythological dance which would belong to all of us. Originally, it was a desire without a shape, and this invitation gave it a space to exist. With The Romeo, I’ve tackled an object full of references and which has no regard for national and cultural borders. Romeo is a mythical figure. He’s a name, and that name tells its myth in the instant. He’s more evocative than Juliet. From all over the world, or close to it, he speaks to us. Just like that tragedy spread its “till death do us part” throughout the world, Romeo’s name calls to mind the figure of the seducer, of the lover, who bears within himself the stigmas of the patriarchy. I enjoyed working on that issue. What I want to do is to create an experience of togetherness, of sharing, which cannot be experienced otherwise than in the here and now of the show, in the union of 2,000 spectators and 13 performers. The Romeo is an imaginary choreography, a journey which transports us through generations and cultures, but without precise dates. Like the choreographic gesture, the music and costumes travel through time and cultures. The whole thing is full of recognisable popular influences but becomes independent, thus creating an imaginary choreography. When I was younger, I was fascinated by the way dances would cross the entire United States to end up in our small Georgia town. Those dances that came from Miami or Atlanta all the way to our town… We learned together, we passed the steps on to one another…
Hybridising cultures, steps, music, even clothes is a very powerful artistic gesture in your work. Can you tell us more about this idea of the circulation of aesthetics and references? What you call a choreography of imagination.
I like the idea of having several imaginary worlds responding to each other and joining during a performance, to allow the spectators to identify with an object which is pure imagination. That object’s first virtue must be to attract us, to project us, to move us through a dance and through gestures we can recognise, which belong to us but which also emancipate us by making us dream. It’s a mixture between a feeling of belonging, a shared culture, and a more personal journey. Here, I ask the question of what a dance or a choreographic gesture can be. I try to retrace a history of dance, through solos and group choreographies. Dancers and spectators identify gestures, little by little we fit the pieces of the puzzle together. I want to take into account the weight of the history of the place to create a larger performance, in the sense that it will bring us all together. What I’m looking for above all is unity. When it works, it requires a sort of alertness that engages us. I feel actively engaged, like I’m actually taking part in an attempt to think art and performance. Choreographer Martha Graham used to say, “theater is a verb before it is a noun.” I really like this sentence, which is more than just a sentence. I create and I act. I create new versions of History, of stories, while knowing full well it’s just the illusion of truth. Actually, all is imagination. I try to reach people’s hearts, to discover what they don’t know, this intangible part. I explore our relationship to the archaic. What remains of it in our memory? That’s why the Cour d’honneur was such an influence. I try to reach for what’s inherent, what’s already within us. Nothing then is too figurative, too demonstrative. Everything is extremely fluid.
As much as imagination, the impossible is also a real playground for you.
During rehearsals, we play a lot. In the studio, we like to go back to the sensations of childhood, when everything seems possible, everything can be a pretext… Costumes, for instance, play an important part in my work. I have a great collection, I buy a lot of them. When we work, we put them on one way, then the other, we fiddle with them, so as to give them new shape and call on various references. I like the idea of striving for new possibilities, even of stepping over the impossible and trying to bring down the barriers we put around our actions and our lives. We play with all those dichotomies while accepting the differences that often pull us apart, we examine them and try to overcome them. I think one of the things an artist can do is to help everyone believe in the impossible, in the power of imagination. We still need those tools to solve some of our greatest problems on this planet, most notably how to live together within different cultures and belief systems. This show is therefore several places at once, it contains several shows. The scenography is simple, using one main element, a trellis which could be a reference to structures one can find in a garden, but also in some fashion shows. That structure delineates most of the dancers’ entrances and exits. It’s covered in blue paint, which was inspired by the walls of the salle des États in the Louvre, where one can see the Mona Lisa. It's a colour which gives space to the paintings, to their frames, there’s the idea of a staging of reality. I wanted to recreate that atmosphere, that shade which can then disappear in the night of the Palais des papes. The trellis becomes a sculpture in the vast space of the Cour d’honneur, its aesthetics and symbolism both contradict and fit within the architecture. How many artists thought what they were trying to do was impossible and still decided to try?
How did the creation of The Romeo take place within the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble, which you’ve directed since 2019?
My creative process always takes place over a number of stages, with an initial stage where I like to experiment with desires and ideas, without the pressure of having to perform a finished show. Then after a break which allows the work and the images to mature, we start again, refine and narrow things down. Since 2019, when I became director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich, Dance Ensemble, my creative process has become simpler, more spontaneous. It’s no longer so dependent on funding and sponsorship applications which sometimes have to happen years before a show, and on which an independent choreographer is particularly dependent. Which often forces artists to start thinking about their work long in advance. My creative process had become very long and articulated, very deep; a desire or an idea could appear five years before the project itself started taking shape. Creation had become but the final step, when desire could finally be externalised and shared. Today, I feel like I can challenge that system; it’s an ideal, extremely privileged position, particularly in Zurich. I can almost feel like I’m doing pure research again, with no time constraint at all. It’s partly what my show Monkey off My Back or the Cat's Meow, created in December 2021, is about: this freedom of creation which is an ideal, but is above all a luxury. Discussions about creation budgets often start very early, with the construction costs for the scenography; but since I usually spend more of my budget on costumes than on the scenography, the temporalities are a little backwards. The costuming team of the Schauspielhaus Zürich was delighted to be given more importance when I came in. The men-women ratio was reversed, since it’s often the opposite between the set construction department and the costume department. In those fields, it’s still very traditional. The Romeo fully benefits from this.
Interview conducted by Moïra Dalant and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach