The rehearsal process has just begun. Are the contours of the performance already visible?

I am consciously pitting myself against what I have made before, which is why we first spent a week doing research with the dancers, to develop the basics of movement language. We are trying to find new inputs. On paper, the concept is clear but now it comes down to really making it concrete and our enthusiasm transferable. I am also involved in conversation with the composer.

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You have now been a choreographer for ten years. Have you developed a set pattern of working? Do you always work with a concept that you think out in advance?

Generally speaking, yes. In the Netherlands, it is customary to rehearse for seven weeks. That is actually too short. In theatre, you often already have basic material in the form of text or music whereas in contemporary dance, everything is built from scratch. That takes at least four weeks and then you still have to work on the performance. So the better you know what you are looking for, the more focused your choices will be. It is tempting to base choices on the beauty of a movement but that is not always what I am looking for. Working in the studio consists of searching and sensing when something is right. You can't think of everything beforehand. It is the interplay between thinking things out and intuitively sensing that leads to the performance.

What does the search in the creation process for The Way You Sound Tonight consist of?

My last three performances form a trilogy for three dancers. This time I wanted to work on something bigger, but I don't find a performance for four dancers interesting; it had to be an odd number. So it became five. And I’ve abandoned the idea of a "performance" because it refers to representation or image. What I want to achieve is that you can be sucked into the experience if you allow it. For that, I needed a larger space. I also delved into the Finnish architect Pallasmaa's sensory approach to space. He states that the echo subconsciously plays an important role in our experience of space. I want to work with surround sound that can travel through space. I call it an ‘acoustic ballroom’.

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Do you also approach dance as sound?

In the relationship between sound and movement, energy is the connecting factor. We are in the Rabo Hall, which can normally hold 800 people. But we don't want audiences to just sit in the stands, instead we bring them on stage together with the dancers. We're still working out how exactly, but it is obviously important to coordinate something like this with Holland Festival at an early stage because it has consequences for the capacity. There are not one but two starting times per evening. It’s xciting to make not one performance with a beginning and an end but a long evening experienced by two groups. Hopefully you generate energy that way and the audience that comes at 9pm will get that something has already happened. It feels and smells different.

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We are profoundly affected by things like energy, perception of space, rhythm, and sound yet we seem to attach importance mainly to what we (think we) see, to language and thought. Is it a mission of yours as a choreographer to make people more aware of their surroundings?

It's a question I sometimes ask myself too: do I make pamphlet-like work that makes people look at life differently? But no, everything I make comes from myself. In I Will Wait For You, a performance about waiting and delayed need satisfaction, I made that explicit by stating that it is about my long-distance relationship. Does that make me a missionary? No, but I do feel it can be an opening to the performance. And once you get there, it can take on personal meaning for you. We are more individualised than we were 10 years ago. In dramaturgy back then, we were more concerned with fixed codes and representation. In my work, I try to generate a collective experience. What it does to you is personal and has to do with who you are and how you're wired. Whether you are patient or impatient. In my latest performance, there is a pretty radical mood change. What do you do when something doesn't live up to your expectations? Of course I have a responsibility as a maker but if people drop out the performance alone cannot be blamed for that because that experience is so personal. I find that field of tension interesting. That's why I sometimes argue that the collective experience is equal to the individual experience. If you allow what happens to you, it can become very gripping. You can't be a missionary in that. The question is: what do you want to achieve with a performance? With The Way You Sound Tonight, I hope for a purifying experience that resonates physically.

How do you describe what choreography means to you?

Working as a teacher too, I see that the younger generation are looking for certain movements. It was the same with me. But the more you make a dancer do certain movements beforehand, the more they become a performer. This creates a distance. For me, it's about being in motion. It doesn't really matter which movement but that you keep moving and keep going. And therein lies the tension. Now we are working on a certain build-up because it is not about a war of attrition. Dancing also provides energy. Now we start with one, then it goes to three, to five, to three and to one again. The dancer who finishes is the one who starts the next run. Should the next dancer copy the movement material or can it be something else? How important is it that movements recur? I find it exciting to discover that.

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Given your education, does your interest in the principles of physics also play a role in this?

Maybe subconsciously. That study was formative, it defined me and it's in me. But I don't open physics books anymore. The temptation is to justify all your choices, whereas in art you don't have to. That's the great freedom.

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Maybe the effect is different now but the curiosity can still be the same, right?

The need to discover who we are and what we are doing here is very similar for both artists and scientists. But there is something beautiful in what art can generate, therein remains something unnameable. That is the magic. If everything is explained, the wonder is gone. I try not to read myself fully and make everything make sense because then my own wonder is also gone. That has also become more important when creating. I have to allow myself to look open-mindedly, because if I’m only intellectual there's a distance between me and the dancers; they feel it. It's a division of roles. All sorts of things happen and it isn’t as if I always know why. That is important. My work feels casual but is precise down to the millimetre. Yet you can't get a grip on it.

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You work abroad a lot. Has that changed your view of the Netherlands and the dance field here?

The biggest difference is how the audience reacts. In the Netherlands, you have to work pretty hard to find an audience for contemporary dance outside the big cities. In France it's easier, the auditorium fills up without them knowing me. Whole families with small children come to see contemporary dance; you never see that in the Netherlands. But the appreciation and the way people watch is also different. We were in Barcelona with I Will Wait For You. They wrote about it so much more poetically than in the Netherlands, but perhaps that is also in the nature of the language. The same goes for Great Britain, Germany, France. What exactly the reason is I don't know but I have some thoughts on it. Our cultural policy that is not bad. It is not so much just about resources, but also about the fact that it is expressed at the highest level, how important art and culture are. Institutes can propagate that, like the Institut Neerlandais in Paris. Which has closed.

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Do you have a dream for the future?

Right now, I feel at home in Amsterdam. I think we make valuable work. Our biggest task is to find the audience that would like to come but for whom it is not yet obvious. I would love that. In the world of marketing they define target groups, but it doesn’t work that way for the pieces I make. It's about someone's character, not where they come from or what age they are. In Dordrecht, I spoke to an elderly lady, she was completely captivated. The energy she gave, the dancers feel that too. People have to want to experience something. But someone of 80 would not necessarily fall within the target group.

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You touch on something important, namely that the idea of the consumer buying a product needs to be shaken up in the performing arts. It is a socio-cultural event. Do I understand that you dream of a deeper connection with a wider audience?

I would really like it if dance in general could come out of its stereotypical box in the Netherlands. We are a bit behind in this compared to our neighbouring countries. But I'm now so caught up in the moment that I have little room for other thoughts about the future. Making The Way You Sound Tonight, that was really a dream. It will become reality very soon.

What does Holland Festival mean to you?

My previous production If You Could See Me Now was bursting at the seams. I needed a bigger space. But realising that together with venues is a big step. It's costly and requires a lot of partners. Something like that is a big task for our organisation. Holland Festival plays an important role in this. We produce ourselves but use their expertise and human resources. And of course its about the audiences, who know that what is at Holland Festival is worth discovering. So it helps us reach a wider audience than we could by ourselves. It's a fantastic collaboration. Even a little unreal. Most of the tickets were sold well in advance. There are people who don't know my work but come to see it because of a text in the programme book. I am so curious to see how the audience will react.

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Published on 13 June 2018.