• Information
• Gallery
• Video
• Tell a friend
• Film screening
• Alain Platel in conversation
• Fabrizio Cassol in conversation

Alain Platel in conversation with Hildegard De Vuyst

It is not really permissible to meddle with Bach’s Matthew Passion. Nevertheless, this is precisely what I planned to do with the composer Fabrizio Cassol. Since vsprs, we have collaborated even more closely. We talk a lot and, remarkably, never disagree. Fabrizio is committed to the production. His approach to the orchestra is the same as my approach to the dancers. He constantly searches for a way to get the very best out of the performers, to achieve a balance between the instruments and to give each person a chance.

He has taken the very essence of the music and strengthened it either by simplifying it or making it even more baroque. In Können Tränen for example, all the embellishments have been removed and the sound is like that of an open wound or an exposed nerve. Erbarme dich on the other hand has become more baroque, like a bucket that is overflowing. At the same time its ending takes us by surprise because the melody continues to linger without any final chords. And between these extremes there is an endless range of variations. Generally speaking, I think that the result is more powerful than the original – for the purposes we have in mind for it. To sum this up in one sentence, our aim is to show the inside of things: this is the essence. Emotion takes precedence over character portrayal. Unlike Bach, who idealises suffering, in his music Fabrizio exposes the innermost part, the ‘guts’.


Passion
Apart from whether it really happened or not, and you either believe it or you don’t, the essence of the story of Christ is the same as you find in many stories, Love thy neighbour. This is all that counts. It is so simple that it takes a whole lifetime to realise. Love others as you love yourself. This is more the essence of a morality than of a religion. And particularly in the story of Christ’s Passion, on which Bach’s Matthew Passion is based, we learn another essential fact of human existence, namely that we are here to die. In the various film versions we have watched with the dancers, the same options present themselves time and again, namely do you mask the facts or show them in all their cruelty? Mel Gibson or Pasolini? The raw version fits in better with my feeling that life is an incredible trap. It is beautiful, made interesting by culture and what people do with it, but you are allowed to taste it only very briefly before it is all over.

In the story of the Passion, the emphasis is on suffering. I believe that man suffers more than he enjoys. Seen from this perspective, the relationship with the mother as a giver of life regains its importance. Even though children are made with positive intentions, every birth is in fact a death sentence. The story of Jesus and Mary is a good metaphor for this. You have to see it as a metaphor because this mother does not sacrifice herself for her child. She does not carry his cross, but hangs around him like a wet cloth dripping with tears. A real mother would step in and take her child’s place. The content was very confrontational for Fabrizio because he is involved in a parent-child relationship, and the child is at the difficult adolescent stage. I can say something like this because I am in the comfortable position of not having any children. However, I hasten to add that although the image of the mother murderess reflects my deepest convictions, there is no condemnation. Nevertheless, deep down I do find it difficult to accept the idea of ‘mortality’, even when things go wrong in life through sickness or accident.

In pitié! there are three central figures: the mother, the son and the sweetheart/sister. The mother is very static, while the other figures do show a little rebelliousness. The figure of Jesus is special. The countertenor Serge Kakudji is deeply religious. It is remarkable how Serge has now crossed our path, how at this point he has suddenly appeared out of the jungle of Kinshasa. The fact that this boy is playing the role is very exciting and confrontational. Although he is a serious believer he has never attempted to express his ‘opinion’ about what is happening to and around him. He does not find it difficult to give everything in the performance a place, or to interpret it. We, on the other hand, are only able to approach it with irony or cynicism. We are not familiar with it, like the dancer Quan who comes from communist Vietnam and has no affinity with anything ‘religious’. We have a preconceived resistance to ‘cheap’ religion. Serge doesn’t have this at all. He does not challenge anything that is happening in the performance around him. He never enters into discussion about things or says things like, “Yes, but Jesus couldn’t do that in this way”. He is a very important presence in creating the bridge between different worlds. He gives it an extra dimension that wouldn’t be there without him: what if we took this story seriously?


Compassion
Why is it important to show suffering? To intensify the commiseration and compassion. The word sometimes has a negative connotation because people interpret it as a passive feeling which does not directly lead to change. However, I believe compassion is the same as loving your fellow man. There is nothing more difficult than to try and consistently base your actions on it. It is precisely this feeling that Christian democracy locally, and the Church globally no longer take seriously; all they are interested in is preserving their own narrow identity. This makes me defiant. If you try to live and act on the basis of ‘compassion’, change is possible. When you look at the world in the knowledge that we have one thing in common, namely that we are mortal, with everything that implies in terms of sickness and loss, if you realise that nobody is better off than you in this, then this can affect the way you think and act.

In any case it affects the way I work. I trust that everyone will find their own solutions. And so I have learned to wait. Which in turn gives people the confidence to participate in the creative process. And this autonomy and self-confidence gives you room to question yourself, or the possibility of physically interacting with one another in a very intimate way. I know this sounds very woolly. But if you truly practise compassion you can no longer think like a member of the NVA (Flemish Nationalist Party), you can no longer think so condescendingly about the ‘other’. I do not foster any illusions that the changes you can bring about in a rehearsal process are permanent. It is so easy to suffer a relapse. Every now and then I have to vent my gall on something else. But once you have tasted it you want more. And so I think that you start an irreversible process.

I hope that the audience is affected in some way, and that a sort of solidarity is initiated based on the realisation that we are all equal; we are all going to die and in that respect no one is better off than anyone else; and perhaps a certain compassion arises from this.

A single performance or image will not bring this about, but the way in which you personally deal with it, will. I can only say that my compassion for humanity has only increased through working together with people on a performance.


Inside out
In pitié I had very intuitively opted for an image, of men defecating on either side of a road, that I saw in an old photo my wife Isnel had sent me from France. As several theatres found it difficult to publish the photo I was forced to explain my intuition. Relieving yourself is usually a very private, intimate activity. I also regard religious feeling as a very private matter. Sharing this extreme intimacy is known as communion. Which is why, in my view, the photo of the men defecating reflects a sort of communion.

I am always afraid that with this sort of twaddle one will end talking intolerantly. Nevertheless, I am convinced that I have always referred to this type of thing in my productions. This is not just some change that has taken place in the last few years. In the past I’ve done it by placing people in their social and political context and creating characters who could easily have been ‘picked up off the street’. Now I do it by turning people inside out. Talking about these existential motives is as political as shouting out slogans in Iets op Bach. I haven’t decided whether the image in the photo will appear quite so nakedly in the performance. In the show it occurs at the very moment that Holy Communion is being taken at Mass: Christ embraces his cross (O süsses Kreuz) and relinquishes his body. Previously we have had a lot of skin and flesh in the performance, but always presented demurely. My basic assumption has always been that by not showing nudity you strengthen the feeling you are trying to convey. However maybe this time I will make an exception for this particular moment. The presence of skin and flesh reveals the incredible need to feel ‘the other’. It is part of the passionate side of life, of sexuality and reproduction. The encounter of skin and flesh produces children. The mother says ‘flesh of my flesh’ when talking about her son. I believe this is what it is all about.


Virtuosity
In recent years virtuosity has become undervalued. Nevertheless, I think things are changing. There was a time when dilettantism and amateurism were highly valued in Flanders as a new impulse that would break things open in the performing arts. I myself contributed to this. But initially amateurs and non-professionals were the only people I was able to work with as the rest were not interested in working with me. This has changed in recent years and I have been increasingly approached by talented professionals. But this then gives rise to comments suggesting that I only work with people who are able to tie themselves into a double knot. I have discovered that the ‘virtuoso’ has more expressive talent than other people. He can help to invent a sort of idiom that makes it possible to reach greater depths below the surface (of emotions). Not only is this meaningful, it is also necessary. I was extremely impressed with the ballet lessons all the dancers were given during rehearsals. You see what wonderful dancers they are and the pleasure this gives them. Unfortunately you often only see this in a setting where all that remains is its value as a spectacular, where it serves no other form of expression. It has reached the point where I have to really encourage the dancers to use their virtuosity as dancers, because when they do this elsewhere they are usually reprimanded to such an extent that they refrain from using their potential. Or they censor themselves, “I am not allowed to do a grand écart because I am performing in a contemporary shiver and shake dance”. I see that within dance there is still a great deal of potential that I can tap into.

The idiom that master dancers are able to create has to do with translating and transposing emotions into language. In fact it always boils down to the same important themes: love, death, and giving and taking. I do not see many new themes. However, we always have to repeat the same themes, but place them in a contemporary context. In the performing arts you only make performances for people living in the here and now. As far as I am concerned, the main challenge in the performing arts is how to touch people and how to make as many people as possible experience the same feeling. It is easier to do this with music. Concerts give this sort of emotional satisfaction far more easily, but it is far more difficult to try and transform this into a ‘language’ and into images. This is precisely where I think virtuoso dancers can play a role. Generally speaking I find hybrid dance an inexhaustible source of inspiration: passing on movement material until it becomes distorted and changed so that it no longer expresses the particular identity of one thing or another. This is not my invention. In fact I see it more as finding myself in a trend that offers new possibilities. Just as people are different, so two people’s movement material can never be identical. This constant remixing and going through the wringer of other bodies and personalities is like making children; it resembles it but it is never identical.


Art of Living
‘Killroy was here’. In the past you always saw this written on toilet walls in cafés. But nobody knows who Killroy is. It says something about the need to prove that you exist and that life only has meaning if you can leave some trace of yourself behind. I recognise this need to write your signature. In the meantime, however, I have learned to put things into perspective. I no longer need to do something special or to receive public recognition. It can be something very simple as long as you feel you have given it intensity. In the past it seemed as if working hours were the most important time there was. What I used to regard as lost time, periods that had to be filled in, I now try to give the same ‘weight’, the same importance.

This is what I also tell the dancers: don’t forget to live; weigh up the importance of what you are doing; bring things into focus, even in a negative way if you have to, so that you don’t live a blurred life. This is probably something I have learned as I get older, a sort of art of living.


© Hildegard De Vuyst August 2008
With thanks to Les Ballets C. de la B. for permission to use this interview.

SHARE:

Sadler's Wells Theatre

5 - 7 Feb 2009