I like it when people really go all out and they are not careful because life is really too short for that.
For me that's the biggest confrontation of all of course - the one with your own body.
What's really, really important to me is a great openness.
That's kind of the cool thing, that you can then design something where you can then put yourself in.
I like it when people really go all out and they are not careful because life is really too short for that.
And the circumstances are too precarious for that.
That's why I hate it when people ask me what will be in ten years from now and 20 years from now.
I really don't give a shit about that. What really matters to me is okay, now we have this moment or this show or this rehearsal.
Now we are in this context together and what are we really doing right now?
That I would say is our main material. For me of course it's something absolutely not special.
I'm always surprised that not everybody works as physically.
For me that’s the greatest confrontation of all - the one with one's own body or with the form that one has.
I never get bored with that because it’s also continuously changing.
And of course it somehow plays a role that I come more from sport and then
definitely tipped into this dance thing and possibly more than is good dealt with my own body.
So first of all in an analytical way.
In the end it was always the case that movement was fun for me and it seemed like a good means of expression.
Better than words could have done that for me.
I don’t have any groundbreaking explanations for it because I was only confronted with this concept of borders from the outside.
So especially in the work with Vincent it was never so much about “which border are we going to cross next”?
Probably we were very busy with understanding the stage as a free space where you can try out many things
and where for us it was also clear that this was also justified as a choreographic form or theatrical form.
It's not just any action but it also immediately has this performative quality, which is always another layer.
That we have used it so much for ourselves as a laboratory, this stage space
to have certain negotiations there, with each other or with the body of another person, with our own body.
Everyone is confronted with some kind of border crossings all the time, in life.
And for us it was always confusing what is socially accepted, and when, from what point onwards it is not.
And that probably provoked us somehow, in a way that we questioned it a lot.
This question is actually becoming more and more difficult to answer the more I am involved in larger production structures.
And I can only test it out for myself on my own body and sometimes I have to project it onto other performers.
I also try to look for people who are interested in similar things as I am interested in.
They don’t to this for the first time in my show. They have done it 5000 times already in a different context or in their own context.
I like to work with people who come up to me and say: “Hey I find it really cool to work with you”
Because then I can rely a lot more on exactly this kind of thing.
That people have a certain trust in me
but also that I can trust people in many respects.
Usually it is essential for me to take part in it myself.
First of all that I can share these experiences myself and because my stage work is actually only secondarily concerned with
how it comes across as a show for an audience
but it is much more important to me how it comes across for us ourselves, what is the experience that we have with it?
Because then I can somehow halfway rely on something reaching the viewer I have to say.
That's kind of the cool thing, that you can then design something where you can also include yourself
and where you can surround yourself with certain people.
And that's also important that people don't read it as a provocation but rather that it should evoke in people:
“under certain circumstances I would also like to do this”.
I often see my work as curatorial work actually.
Because many people bring their own work into the work and that should also be relatively transparent.
But I definitely have the feeling, and I am allowed to make the final decision.
I already have quite a preconceived idea actually before the shows, what the role of different people is in this show.
I am quite bad at giving instructions to people.
For me it is extremely important that people are really proactive,
that it is very clear to them that they are part of shaping the piece, that they have to be very active.
For me it's extremely important that people suggest things and
I much rather work with what people bring than telling people very concretely what they should do.
For me that is extremely important: who are the people I get together to realise this project?
And when the rehearsal process itself really begins in the sense of bringing people together in a studio situation or something.
We always start with a tough physical training that is designed so that everyone can do it
because it is simply important to me that there is a certain curve of physical development that the whole cast goes through,
so that everyone has the subjective feeling that I am building something.
In the end I come out of this stronger than at the beginning.
Because the positions within the show are so diverse and they are not all such uniform group parts.
I need something that we all really do together.
So of course for me it has always something to do with the transformation of the body somehow.
Now also when you look at your body, what can you see in it or what kind of training,
But at the end of the day it also means what kind of life or lifestyle can you see in this body
and to what extent does that then correspond to a certain kind of lived reality?
And I mean of course we always do it a bit in a nutshell, from project to project, which is also subject to certain production
structures where a transformation is only possible to a limited extent or is rather an illusion because it’s still theatre.
And theatre should be created in a rehearsal process of three months.
Specifically for me it is relevant somehow in terms of dance history how the stage is or was used.
“Tanz” actually, it came out of Apollon, where we already dealt a bit, but more through neoclassical ballet, with Balanchine.
At that time it was a work that I saw in the National Ballett in Amsterdam
where this topic of women was picked out as a central theme
I actually had the desire for these genderless “fairies”.
And through that I came to the dance of “Les Sylphides”.
La Sylphide and Les Sylphides but first I was interested in Les Sylphides, these fairy figures.
But then for research I also watched La Sylphide at the Opera in Berlin, romantical ballet from the beginning of the 19th century.
And I found it really great. Of course because this is also the narrative of the romantical ballett.
I also found it very funny and very grotesque, actually very absurd.
Then I spoke to a dance scholar who pointed out to me that all these romantic ballets
were actually stunt ballets and that there were many more parallels to my interests than I thought originally.
And then I was firmly convinced that I want to engage with romantical ballett.
And to work this out, too. This “stunting” aspect, this action ballett actually.
In our research we called it our “Sylphidic Studies” or sylphidic action ballett.
So this kind of action ballett that tries to lift the body from the floor.
For me that is the exciting thing, to go on these excursions
and then to look at things at the ballett, as well as at stunt studios watch people work, as well as at some circus training sessions.
So I mean we work a lot, we do a lot of workshops where we get specific people and practise things with them.
What is really, really important to me is a great openness. That's what I feel is the essence of the work, that you first try things out
and afterwards you can allow yourself to do that, that you judge these things or afterwards you can talk about how it was or so
but that there is a very great openness to really try things out practically before you negotiate them verbally.