Critical Correspondence

Raimund Hoghe in conversation with Lili Chopra

Boléro Variations

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Lili Chopra: So Raimund, you just had your first tour in the US. You presented Boléro Variations at TBA [Time Based Art Festival, presented by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art], it also opened the Walker Arts Center, and you just had your week in New York with Boléro Variations at Dance Theater Workshop and one performance of L’Apres-midi at Danspace Project and I want to ask as a first question how do you feel about this US tour and how do you feel with your presence in New York in particular?

Raimund Hoghe: I feel very very good because the audience was very warm, very open and open-minded. I was not scared of the audience because I always think we are all human beings, but people didn’t see this kind of work before – it’s so calm and very silent – you don’t find this easily in New York. When I was in the US and in New York for the first time in June I said “it could be very strong, especially in a city like New York to see this kind of work because its so different from everything you see around, or what you see on Broadway”. I’m not against Broadway, but its really a big contrast – and this interests me. I’m very happy and thankful that people took it with so much respect. There was no talking during the performance and no SMS messages with people sitting in the theatre. It was always very respectful.

Lili: I heard you talk about the fact that you don’t really talk about the group of “audience” but individuals and I feel that the essence of your work is about individuals and how we are all human beings. We have these preconceived ideas of the others, the beautiful, the ugly. And it seems that in all your work you are taking down these barriers, these walls that we create between cultures, between individuals. Do you want to talk a little about your process within that particular idea?

Raimund: But you expressed it already beautifully. For me its really important that we are all human beings and it doesn’t matter where we are born, in which country. We all can communicate. Today my taxi driver was from Ghana in Africa and he lived also in Korea, he could speak some Korean. I could invite him to the performance and I think he would understand the work. And he thought we work for the United Nations. This was very nice and I was thinking, yes we are a dance company, but we are a kind of united nations, because everyone has a different background, a different passport. We don’t talk about these different nationalities – its normal for us. One of our dancers couldn’t come to the US because his passport was held by Homeland Security. Everyone has his own history and brings his own history, but its not that we put it in the work with marketing. In the group this is not the main point. We are connected. And we don’t need a statement. If they live in New York, or in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, it doesn’t matter. When people ask sometimes, “It must be very different if you perform in Korea or Japan?” No, its not. For example in Korea. They cried a lot during the performances in Seoul and there was this link between the cultures. My experience is that we all are the same and we can communicate.

Lili: I want to take it one step further because it seems that in your work you place all human beings at the same level but you also sublime them. The place that you create for each of your performers is so unique and so respectful of their individuality but also shows the extraordinary beauty of human beings. How do you work with your performers to create this incredible space and also to reveal so much beauty?

Raimund: I give them the space. I always mention Peter Brook. He said one has to create an atmosphere in which things can happen. I am there in the rehearsals to create this atmosphere in which things can happen, that they don’t feel judged immediately, that they feel accepted, that they can listen to the music or to my proposals of music if they like or not. If they don’t connect with the music I have to find another music for them that they can connect to. And I am not interested in virtuosity. The movement of a finger or a hand can create something very strong. You don’t know why this is so strong. We also don’t talk about what they feel when they listen to the music. I think if people are accepted then everyone has a beauty and a part of it is also that they don’t copy someone else. They are really themselves. They don’t have to do big jumps or turns. Some people when they work for the first time with me – like Yutaka Takei. He worked before with Carolyn Carlsson and other choreographers in France, big companies. The first rehearsal I said, ‘No, you don’t have to do this spectacular things.’ Now I see him so beautiful inside himself. I am very touched how he developed and how he is devoted to the work, not to me, to the work. He said in a discussion that for him the work is a way to forget the ego. It is not about our ego. Its not about my ego or what I think. I say also that I am not the creator of the piece so I am like Stravinsky when he said – “I’m the vessel through which the Sacre passed”. This is for me very important. I am witnessing this and I don’t know how it comes. When I was a writer, I made a lot of portraits of people. In these portraits I always wanted to share the beauty of these people – ordinary people, social minorities – everyone had a strong quality. I could only write about people I accepted – like the dancers, I can only work with them if I can accept them also as a human being. On their side, they know the work. We meet only for the work. We don’t live together. We live in different cities, different countries, but we meet for the work and we have the desire to share and to express beauty.

Lili: You often talk about inviting the performers into your home, into your house and so because of that they are not moving the furniture around. They respect your environment. I am curious as to how you would define what your house is like and also within the context of theaters and different venues, how do you actually transform the venues themselves in order for them to fit into your environment?

Raimund: It is my space. My private space at home in Düsseldorf looks like the stage. It is very empty, very little objects, for example on the floor some stones which are used for Sans-titre, the last piece. The space is constructed by the music, by the colors on the wall and this makes the room. Sometimes I use little objects and they help to create the space. The last piece we rehearsed in white or black spaces and it changed a lot. For me it was a very good exercise to adapt. When I arrive in the theater, I try to make it my space. So I change a lot. At DTW they put a bar on the side with black velvet over one meter high. I said maybe higher because there were a lot of light spots hanging there and I didn’t want to see them. Then they did two meters high but then it didn’t look good. They changed it again and finally I was happy with the space and it became in a way my space. Very often when people see a performance in a space, they say “I can’t imagine it in another space. It looks like it was made for this space.” I like this very much. Also when we did Boléro Variations in Montpellier, we did it outside. It was unforgettable, the stars and the wind and a little cat was going over the stage. So this is very strong.

Lili: Yes I remember.

Raimund: There were people who could not imagine it in a black box. They were a bit afraid, Philip [Bither] from the Walker Art Center was also in Montpellier. He couldn’t imagine how it would work in his space. Finally there is another quality for each space and human beings. There are different qualities from different countries. An African person has another quality than a European person and this is to accept that everyone has his own quality, each country. This latest piece Sans-titre was about this difference, but also to see that it can communicate, these two people representing different cultures. This is the touching thing. For me sometimes, it is a bit shocking that it is so special, my work. People say, “your work is so special because it is human.” For me, it is so normal. People say, “this humanity it is so rare to see.” It should not be rare, not special.

Lili: In a work that is codified as dance and surrounded by the codes in which a dancer’s body should be, you talk about your body like a beautiful landscape. Can you speak a little bit in terms of your own presence and your decision of putting your presence and your body into the work?

Raimund: This point was also one of the first starting points, this sentence from Pier Paolo Pasolini: “Jeter son corps dans le battaile” (throwing the body into the fight). There is also the auto-portrait of Hervé Guibert, a French writer who died of AIDS. He made also a self-portrait for the TV and in one moment he was naked going to the water. He was extremely skinny but he had a beauty. This gave me the courage to go with my body on stage. The starting point for my first solo was that I wanted to do political statement on stage. At first it was about Joseph Schmidt, a Jewish singer who was exiled by the Nazis during the Third Reich. I was also influenced by the people who died during the period when I created the piece in 1994. Many dancers (and others, of course) died of AIDS during that time. I wanted to say something about them because there were some links to the history, some arguments people used in Germany against people with AIDS that were the same arguments people used 50 years before in the Third Reich against Jewish people and other minorities. I wanted to have these plus my body which is not a normal body. I have a hunchback. Sometimes people think I have pain but I don’t have any pain. In the first solo I did for myself, at the very beginning I present my back naked. I was always very afraid to go to a swimming pool or so on. But on stage I can show how my body is. During the performance I have for a moment a plaster cast of my complete back and I turn my back to the front and then it becomes a landscape. A body is a landscape and my body is a different landscape. In the summer, I like the sea very much. I don’t like so much the hills but I can’t say, I want only the sea. Please take the hills away. It is the same with the human body. I can’t think I only want this type of body or I only want to have blonde people like the Nazis said. I really want to see my body as a landscape and to accept my body more than before. But it is still a big difference, presenting the body on the stage and outside the stage. On stage, I do it in an art form and I know how it looks and in which way I present myself.

Lili: What then is the difference in terms of the role of the artist onstage and in our society? You talk about the idea of beauty, you talk about the politics… what do you feel is your responsibility as an artist in society?

Raimund: I can talk about diversity. I can talk about German history. During the Third Reich in Germany people were selected. And today you also select people because they have another color or sex. In some countries girls are killed before they are born because they have the wrong sex.

If today you get a disabled child, it is possible to do the abortion very late, until the eighth month in some countries in Europe. Even if they are born, they put it in a corner of the hospital, they don’t take care of this baby. I am against this selection. Who is deciding this human being has the right to live and the other not? There are in Germany some theater groups with mentally ill actors. They also would not be born. In the Third Reich it was the same. They were killed. I am really against this selection that people decide who has the right to live and who does not. This is not for me the world I want to live in. Also this pressure that is so strong that people want to look forever 20 with plastic surgery. They look 20, they are 60. I think sometimes how they feel inside. It’s fine but they shouldn’t say to me “You are ugly.” Who makes this definition? And they don’t say, “Your body is a beautiful landscape.” What is beauty is another discussion. Is a breast with silicone, lips with botox – all this, is this beauty? It can be for them. But they shouldn’t say people who don’t have big breasts with silicone are ugly. They miss something. Young girls, already at 17 have something in the lips. We should accept difference and this is for me a very important point of my work. People say they discover in Boléro Variations, at the end you can’t say this is the ugly body in the middle and the others are all beautiful. One of the first critics who wrote about the piece, Thomas Hahn wrote in Ballettanz that he had the feeling that the others were missing something on the back. A friend said it is also the shadow, it reflects. It was a beauty for him. But for many people its ugly. It is just a definition to say this is ugly and this is beautiful. For me, artificial bodies are not beautiful. I know also some men like to go to the studio to transform the body extremely. But this is not what I want. To accept the body how it is, this is for me really important. Society is offering more than ever what beauty is, how a woman should look. You don’t present women over 50 or 60 on TV. In the past, the only parts for people with my body was in theater pieces or movies as a victim or a comedian, something in the circus. And the black women were there but as a maid, as cleaning people. I am fighting that these people get another view. So I did Swan Lake and in a way I am the prince in the piece. I am the prince and why not? Why can’t I be the prince? I am also another character but I am the prince.

Lili: It is absolutely evident when attending one of your performances to feel an amazing respect from the audience to the work and almost a solemnity. It is as if you were tapping into the essence of human existence beyond even the body. There is something almost spiritual in your work. I was wondering if there was a particular process that you were going through with your performers or even just individually?

Raimund: Oh, its very individual and I don’t know what practice the dancers have but no one is taking drugs or is a victim of alcohol. They are all very clean. Personally, since my childhood, I do meditation. This is my preparation so I have a link to spirituality. It doesn’t matter what we do or in what we believe or what is religion, but that there is something we believe in or we can communicate. One of the dancers, Yutaka is very much with Zen and he brings something that he can communicate. The others can connect with another religion. And this is for me another kind of meditation, and one source of theater, this spirituality or this meeting or this ritual. The audience in the performance, they are with us in the same space. There is every night a different atmosphere because they are different human beings and sometimes they build this community. For me what is always the strongest in the performance is when I hear people nearly not breathing then it is an incredible silence. At the end, when they don’t want to applaud, this I like very very much.

This experience also is like a meditation. Performance is a kind of meditation. Some younger performer came and said he felt cleaned after the performance, after l’Apres Midi. It was incredible. This is for me part of theater and it is in all cultures. This is something I want to remember. For simplicity, it is not props and the costumes or the jumps. There is some other quality coming and I am very thankful that I can be the vessel. I am very thankful that people are so touched. To come to America for the first time and to feel that people are open, they enjoy also the silence. In the opening scene of Boléro Variations, I am just measuring the stage very slowly to beautiful music from Ravel. There are always different things coming up and here in the US, it was this big journey. Many years ago, more than 200 years ago when they came to America, there were these dreams I could feel. It was very very strong, to feel this whole history. Therefore, I feel and the audience also feels something. That is in a way the key. I always try to connect myself with people or with music or cities. I don’t have to see the Empire State Building. I see the human beings. I see the taxi drivers. This is enough for me. If I would have time, I would maybe go but now, there is no time. For me it is really the human beings. I am here for the human beings, not for the Empire State Building.

Lili: I’d love to end on that note. Thank you very much.

Raimund: Thank you.