SAILING BETWEEN WORLDS
Brussels, November 2024
“It's about constantly looking for a way to reinvent oneself, to transform oneself, to use a limit to go beyond it. I think that's what naturally led me to dance.” When DAMIEN JALET uttered these words, I somehow understood the essence of his work and all his collaborations; all the doors he opened because of his visceral need to cross boundaries, to infiltrate different artistic fields through movement to perpetually question our perception and ourselves.
Forever following his desire for freedom, the Belgian choreographer and dancer has built a prestigious career, embracing and reinventing all the forms dance can take, from the stages of theatres to the one of Madonna's world tour. After working with some of the greatest artists of his generation, such as Thom Yorke, Jim Hodges, Luca Guadagnino, JR and Marina Abramović, Jalet once again asserted his multi-hatted talent by choreographing Emilia Pérez – Jacques Audiard's latest film which is currently a contender for the 2025 Oscars nominations. In the end, the Belgian choreographer is like a ferryman who sails between creative worlds, inviting us to dive into the times he sculpts, the perspectives and perceptions he transforms.
Amid his round-the-world navigation and his ever-growing projects, I was lucky enough to meet him in a Brussels café to discuss his many collaborations, his perception of bodies in theatre and film, his dreams fulfilled, time and what's left, spaces and what's next. Summing up such a personality and sensibility is no easy task, so here's a modest overview of a fascinating conversation with one of the most outstanding artists and choreographers of our time.
Let's start at the end. Jacques Audiard's film Emilia Pérez, in which you did all the choreography, has been selected as a contender for the forthcoming Oscars nominations. How do you feel about this?
I'm very happy with the path this film has taken since its first screening at Cannes. It's a film that's been the talk of the town, thrilling some and questioning others. Above all, it has real transformative power, especially because of its lead actresses, including Karla Sofía Gascón who is the first trans actress to win an award at Cannes. Regarding the Oscars, doing a film campaign is actually quite intense and the stakes are actually different for every department. The thing is, there's no award for dance in cinema. I have to face the reality that there's very little recognition for choreographers in general in this industry. Once again, dance seems a bit like the fifth wheel, even for a film like Emilia Pérez, for which I worked almost as hard as the musicians. However, I'm already experiencing something huge, and I can't complain: the production has invited me to take part in a lot of events and talks that other choreographers have never been invited to. It shows that there’s progress, but it's crazy to see that recognition is partly related to whether or not you're eligible for an award. I don't really care about prizes, but it confirms that dance is still a separate art form, that it can be associated with a whole range of media but still has the guest status. I’m a little frustrated by that and I want to fight for dance to be recognized as a department in its own right, one that can play a full part in the creation of a film.
It's quite surprising to hear this lack of consideration, at a time when dance is so present in so many forms. For over 20 years, your work has been affirming the encounter between movement and various artistic fields, including contemporary art, fashion, music and cinema. How did you come to dance, and to this encounter with all these other mediums?
I came to dance a little bit by chance. I've always been passionate about performing arts and I first studied theatre and directing at INSAS in Brussels. I've always had a problem with predefined environments and wanted to open the doors. I went into dance because I love its freedom, because I see the body as the guarantor of a form of authenticity, reality and truth. Movement has the power to cross boundaries. In the choreographic choices I make, I like to create a frame, but it's there to be transcended. Within this limit, what interests me is to go beyond it, constantly looking for ways to reinvent and transform. In the '90s in Belgium, choreographers were experimenting a lot with creativity. This was a real turning point for me, unlike my theatrical studies which dictated [strict] rules. I found it more exciting to invent codes, and that's what gave me the energy to go against restrictions throughout my career. I believe that everything I've done and continue to do responds to an intuitive and visceral desire.
This desire led you, among other things, to choreograph Madonna's tour Madame X.
It's funny because I actually started dancing by recreating Madonna's choreography when I was 15. Choreographing for her 30 years later is like pursuing a sort of cycle. It’s like I've reached the end of my desires in a way. There are also all the artists I've worked with over the last 30 years, who similarly shaped my teenage years. It's like coming full circle, even if it's never finished.
Indeed, collaboration is at the heart of your work. You teamed up a lot with artists such as Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Marina Abramović, Jim Hodges and Kohei Nawa, but also with names like Thom Yorke, Thomas Bangalter and Luca Guadagnino. How did you build all these incredible relationships?
It's all a succession of sliding doors. When I was studying at INSAS, the dancer Carlos De Haro spotted me dancing in a club and asked me to perform in his play, telling me I could become a dancer. I met Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui when he was creating his first piece, then we did a creation together. Marina Abramović came to see us and then later we started to work together. I discovered Kohei Nawa's work in an exhibition in Japan 15 minutes before it closed. Sidi was invited to do a piece at the Louvre and proposed me to do it, Luca Guadagnino saw the video of this piece, Les Médusées, and asked me to work on Suspiria. Madonna saw Suspiria and asked me to do her tour... It's the interweaving of all these situations that got me where I am today. Sometimes it comes down to nothing. I believe that when you're focused and centred, you generate a sort of gravitational field. In the end, my career is a constellation of dialogues, contributions and exchanges.
I suppose you must receive a lot of proposals. Do you often say “no”? What makes a good collaborator?
I say “no” more and more, even to people I don't feel like saying it to at first sight. Being a choreographer is about sculpting time inside of a certain space. You then develop a certain awareness of time, of what you're capable of creating in a day, and you clock everything you do. In a way, I try to channel my time. If there's a strong connection with an artist, it's because there's a kind of concordance of time and space to invest. And that's not possible with everyone. New links are constantly being forged, but I also like collaborations that are established over time, like the one I have with Jim Hodges or my partner Aimilios Arapoglou who is so important in everything I do. I do many different kinds of projects with very different people, but for me, there's a real consistency in having worked with this person and then another at this specific moment. The cross-cultural aspect of collaboration is also wonderful! Working with people who are on the other side of the world changes your perception. In the end, collaboration is about starting to see reality through that person's eyes. It's a kind of peripheral vision which I think helps to avoid producing the same thing over and over again.
Without doing the same things, do you have a kind of creative routine that can be transposed to theatre as well as to other types of production?
I try to make every project a new way of creating. I don't like recipes, but I can't say I never repeat myself. It's funny how obsessions keep coming back. I can be really into something, forget about it for five years, and then suddenly come back to it but with a different perspective. All this brings me back to the notion of a spiral, which has always fascinated me, and life is just one. This spiral is present in the movement of the Earth, of DNA, of water. It's an invisible universal law. For me, creative work also means accepting to return to certain things. However, each field I work in and each project I develop is like a world in its own right. I like to infiltrate these different worlds because each one transforms me and allows me to keep coming back to another. Working on Emilia Pérez was a whole new world!
How did you get into this world?
To be honest, when I read the script I didn't know what I could bring to the project. It was very different from what I usually do. There's a kind of abstraction in the way I approach things, whereas here, there's a narrative and characters. It raised some very interesting questions, like how do you choreograph from a non-fixed point of view, how do you work with depth of field, how do you choreograph acting? What does dance bring to the film and how do you sculpt it with a moving point of view? For example, the scene of the gala was not supposed to be a dance scene. I insisted it became one because Zoe Saldana is also a dancer, and it became one of the most important scenes of the film. I'm very proud of it. It confirmed my strength of will and the possibility of bringing something other than “classical” dance to this kind of project, of being able to show bodies that express a complexity of emotions and not just something pretty and conventional. I really enjoyed working with Audiard precisely because he's always questioning and reinventing himself.
Did the film raise any particular issues compared to creating a piece?
Well, I have been a dancer/choreographer for almost 25 years and I start to wonder about time passing and what's left of it. What remains of all that effort and perspiration, all those aches and pains? In the end, only memories are what may have left its mark on certain people. There are photos and videos that no one watches because dance footage is still very niche. A writer leaves a book, a filmmaker a film, a musician a record, a painter a painting... I wonder what will remain of what I've built. Dance is an art about the now, an ephemeral act. There are pieces that leave traces for life, but in reality, it takes so much effort to make a show, perform it and make it last. Working with visual artists and filmmakers allows me to integrate an ephemeral experience into something that becomes an arrow in time. There's a certain satisfaction in seeing your work become part of something that won't disappear with you.
Every artistic practice somehow raises the question of leaving a mark, even more so when it's about an ephemeral act. Let's talk about your pieces then. There is a cinematic, almost contemplative feel to most of them. When I saw Planet in 2023, I was struck by how bodies, scenography and materials become an environment in their own right. There's something quite mystical about the stages you create. What does this say about the perception of bodies and movement, yours as well as ours?
I think it goes back to the origins of why we dance. Because it's very mysterious. And - I'm going to say something a bit cliché - life is very mysterious. I want to cultivate this mystery by questioning our perceptions and ourselves. I remember the dizzy spells I had as a child when I started to become aware of certain things, like existential feedbacks. I like to question things that seem elementary and taken for granted, like having a body, two legs, two arms, a head; breathing, walking upright, feeling the force of gravity, being so-called a man, a woman, a human being. But what does this mean? What separates the human from the non-human? What is our relationship to time and the world? Some things that seemed infinite to me are in fact very finite. At the same time, within this finitude, there's something infinite again. It's these feedbacks, these loops that I like to constantly remind myself of. In the end, the body simply deals with contradictory forces, be they physical, chemical, corporeal or emotional. A dancer has to experience all these realities, all these universal laws with which he has to negotiate. That's why I like to work with these laws, such as gravitational force and centrifugal force, combined with the use of different materials, to keep on questioning the way we see and consider things. Dance remains one of the most spiritual acts, because it's one of those things you can't possess.
It goes back to the freedom of dance you were talking about, yet the bodies you stage are often constrained.
Constraint is the best way to talk about infinity. You need to speak of the opposites, of death to speak of life, of darkness to speak of light, of violence to speak of peace. There's something antagonistic about it, but it's part of the nature of things. I don't want to do a consensual piece where there's an absence of these oppositions. For me, a show is a kind of boat that sails between two shores and connects them. That's why my association is called Ferryman Projects.
You were talking before about being centred. As someone who sails between different worlds and works with some very big names, how do you stay grounded?
It's paradoxical, but the more I move around, the more I'm in different worlds, the more it centres me. I've got this social personality that's also secretive. It goes hand in hand with having a form of exposure and at the same time always being a little hidden. I work with Selena Gomez, Madonna, or Zoe Saldana, who are extremely exposed women. Guiding them means being a little in their light, but actually a lot in their shadow. And I like that because, in the end, I don't depend on anyone’s world. Not that I don't depend on anyone, because everything I do is related to institutions, productions, etc. But the fact that I've cultivated my practice in different worlds and dared to say “no” means that I don't feel I owe anything to anyone. Meanwhile, when I have commitments, whether with theatres or individuals, I go all out and see them through to the end. But this idea of freedom that I find intrinsic to dance, I try to apply it to every aspect of my life. This is also why I don’t have a company. It allows me to keep navigating between all these worlds, knowing that if one closes then I can move on to another.
Does this navigation respond to a search, a desire for beauty?
It depends on how you define beauty. Personally, I see beauty as something to be constantly redefined. That's why I like to create things that provoke a certain discomfort. This discomfort sometimes absorbs assimilated standards of what we collectively consider beautiful, but takes them elsewhere, to a zone where there's a kind of friction. We have an absolute thirst for beauty, I have an absolute thirst for beauty. I certainly don't want to devalue that, but then we have to ask ourselves in what form it's given to us. Is it through the standards that the media define, or through something that is manipulated to play with areas that are not attractive at first sight? I often find something disturbing sublime, and it's this antagonism that's interesting because there's this willingness to go into the darkness from a different angle.
When you joined Wim Vandekeybus' Ultima Vez company in 1990, were you already dreaming of all this?
Absolutely not! I couldn't imagine that one day Madonna would wish me happy birthday. [Laughs] And I still dream, when I have time for it. [Laughs] I try above all to be in the moment, to do everything as fully and conscientiously as possible, and to live without being constantly anxious about whether I'm going to make it or not. It's a real balance. It’s true that I'm living a lot of the dreams I had, so I feel like I am in a pretty amazing alignment. After that, reality is more complex and less glamorous than we imagine. It's still incredible, but it's also a lot of pressure, a lot of work and a lot of questions about legitimacy. Most of the time, you're in the thick of it, and it's only when it's over that you can feel a sense of achievement. But very quickly there's the call of what comes next. In front of all these dreams, the times we live in are actually very hard. It calls for a form of responsibility, and that's where the anxiety comes from. Is what I'm saying right and going to contribute in some small way to making the world a better place, or is it going to create controversy? Emilia Pérez is really frustrating to some people, and I'm sorry about that. I know we've done everything to find the right balance, but it's never going to be completely enough. That's part of the art. What's important is to be able to stay connected to what inspires us and not let everything else choke the fire inside us. It's a sacred fire to be preserved.
So, you still have doubts?
Of course, for the simple reason that when you do something, you're doing it for the first time. Creating a project means going to an unknown place and guiding the people you bring there. It's an act of faith.
We've already said a lot, and there's a lot more to say! It’s already going to be hard to summarize these two hours of conversation. [Laughs] So, to conclude, what’s next?
This year, I'm really getting back to my work as a choreographer. There's my latest piece and fourth collaboration with Nawa Kohei, Mirage. The music is made by Thomas Bangalter and the piece is going to be performed by The Geneva Ballet, after having been played for the first time in a very intimate theatre in Japan last year. At the same time, I'm working on a new creation, Thrice, which brings together three pieces, three trios and a piece for 9 dancers. Among these pieces, there are Les Médusées (2013) and Brise lames (2021) that are going to be remounted. The structure of this composite piece is inspired by Mexican poet Octavio Paz's poem Wind, Water, Stone, with each piece referring to an element. Live music will be played by Bendik Giske and Koki Nakano, and the premiere will take place at the Oslo Opera House.
There are also new connections being made and new doors being opened, thanks to the Emilia Pérez project and its promotion for the Oscars. I've got proposals I can't talk about yet. One thing’s for sure, I want to carry on working with cinema, as long as I can bring something meaningful to the table, with form and meaning. And in the midst of all these possibilities, I always try to keep an open space to let myself be surprised.
Interview by Hanna Pallot
Photography by Rowan Papier
Fashion by Von Ford