The dance in The Romeo seems to come from another time, passed on from body to body in the same way that stories were passed on orally. Where did the idea for this speculative dance come from?

Working with speculative dance has been part of my process since Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church. For The Romeo, the main thing is that I was invited to create a work for the Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes in Avignon. There are a lot of expectations that come with this invitation. It’s a huge space with 2,000 seats! I wanted to make a work that brings people together and meets the history of the space but also the history of the moment. I thought of creating something that the audience would believe they knew already and feel like it belonged to them. But how could I make them believe that? It’s really a trick, because this dance is a complete fiction.

There’s a wide variety of people at the Cour d’Honneur. Some people don’t come for the Festival d’Avignon but because they are going to see a show at the Palais des Papes. One night, I was walking back to my apartment and I heard, “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou?” I turned around and it was one of those policemen in a red jacket pointing at me. He called out to me poetically and in a dramatic fashion to show me that he had seen the show! I don’t think he had seen my work elsewhere, but he saw me at the Cour d’Honneur and it moved him. I was so touched! Connecting with this audience was a quite a challenge, but I think it was a success in many ways.

Fashion figures prominently in your work, including your use of the catwalk and the way you play with costumes. How does it influence your creative process?

I read a lot of postcolonial feminist studies and I understood right away that fashion, or what we wear, is an integral part of our culture that should be studied and analyzed as much as politics or law or history. Of course, clothing has often been delegated to the female sphere and seen as less important. Even in the theatre, sets are seen as more important than costumes because they’re considered architecture. I made sure to turn that around in my work. So my interest comes in part from my studies but also from my mother. She loves clothing and she was always dragging me around to stores as a kid. It’s in me and in my family—it’s something we do. When I became aware of voguing, which turned fashion movement into dance, it really spoke to me. Then, when I started to understand its relation to postmodern dance, it became even more fruitful, and that’s when I created the series Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church.

In 1999, when I started the series, people associated fashion with Gucci and other major brands, but I don’t think that’s what fashion is. Fashion is the way we use clothing to present ourself to the world. The way it affects our behaviour, the roles we play, power relationships, our identity. This is fashion. Everyone participates in fashion, whether you like it or not. And everyone knows how to read a fashion show. Everyone understands what’s happening on the catwalk. In trying to gain togetherness, you’re looking for strategies and symbols that can bring us to the same page. It’s a no-brainer for me to use it.

Your work is perceptive, knowledgeable, and entertaining at the same time, particularly in the way you reference history. How did you think about the past when creating The Romeo?

I just tried to make fictional and speculative dances inspired by the past—dances that slowly, slowly, make you feel they are from another time. It’s not authentic; it’s really an artistic manoeuvre. Of course, some dances like the Egyptian dance and the snake dance are familiar. I didn’t anthropologically study mating rituals. I just started snaking… Also, I named the dance The Romeo because I wanted a word that didn’t need translating. It’s because of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that we associate the name Romeo with the idea of the lover. And I thought that this dance could have traveled through Shakespeare, through Ancient Rome, and other places. I was out there just imagining things. Nothing was looked at in history. I was making up history in a totally fictional way. It was a risk, but it’s also what makes it a success. Since it’s not trying to teach you a real dance, you can groove with it. I wanted you to feel from looking at it that you had seen it somewhere. That’s the magic of theatre. You know it’s a fiction and yet somehow it catches you and makes you believe it.

There’s always a lot of delicacy and vulnerability in the way you dance and the way the dance develops on stage. Is that deliberate? And what does it mean to you?

I’m pretty dedicated to showing weakness on stage. For so long, dance has been about strength. That’s great, but I think you have to give space to weaknesses and vulnerabilities and doubts as well… A lot of that comes from my research into Butoh philosophy and the way that dance form has transformed me. And I think that’s why people come to see my work, because there’s something very human about it. It shows a part of us that we often feel ashamed of or think we have.

Interview by Karine Denault

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