The Taipei Times asked Ultima Vez founder Wim Vandekeybus a few questions about his new production, nieuwZwart (“New Black”), by telephone yesterday afternoon. He still had the rapid-fire delivery that made interviewing him such a challenge in 2001 and 2007, which was a bit surprising as he had just cleared immigration and customs at the Taiwan Taipei International Airport just minutes before.
TAIPEI TIMES: In previous interviews you have said that you first come up with the name or title of a piece and then you start creating it. Was that the process this time?
WIM VANDEKEYBUS: I must say that before I had long titles. Now the title came later, sometime in the middle. Before I started this piece I did Black Biist for the Goteborg Opera Ballet [in Stockholm, Sweden], which was about the Oedipus myth. It was a very concrete piece so I wanted to do something more abstract.
NieuwZwart is about people building up something; it’s very tribal, the music is very tribal with a primitive beat. The music of Mauro Pawlowski is very rhythmic, very tribal; he’s a wonderful musician. Each time they build something it’s a kid of restart, a rebirth, a new energy. The text by Peter Verhelst is also a kind of ball of energy. The text, the dancers, and the music together — we’re trying for something new.
It’s like being a painter who invents a new color. A pure black doesn’t exist, a pure white doesn’t exist. You have to mix two elements together. The atmosphere [of the piece] is quite dark, things aren’t quite recognizable.
TT: Why did you downsize the company?
WV: I wanted to do a piece with people who had never created a show with me, to isolate people. I had worked with Ulrike [Reinbott] before, but on a revival [of one of my earlier works], which is not the same [as creating a new piece]. Gavin Webber had worked with me before but not for five years. Before he was a dancer but now he must carry the text.
Besides, the [older] company members are doing other things. They have also come to a point where they want to start new things, their own things. But we all support one another … two of them are premiering a new work of their own soon.
If sometimes you know people, you have to explain less. With new people you have to find a new way of explaining, a new way of creating, a new way of looking. It’s a very poetic process; you are creating a new creature. In this way the music is the heartbeat, the actors and dancers are the limbs and tendons.
TT: You have often incorporated filmmaking into your pieces and then made short films of the works. Now you’re scheduled to start filming a full-length feature in Brazil in 2011. Is film going to replace dance theater for you?
WV: We [the company] just bought a new building so I will have to keep creating pieces. Films are an integral part of the process. I don’t see a division but I also don’t believe in repeating yourself.
I spent five years working on a [feature film] script and just delivered it. We will start filming in Brazil in 2011. It’s called Galloping Mind and it’s about twin orphans who are split up and grow up separate, with one raised in a very luxurious life. It’s very adventurous, not a dance performance.
I’ll also be doing a show with kids in Brazil next year as we get ready to move to Brazil to make the film. We have done three of these kinds of shows in Belgium before. We do workshops, train the kids how to [do] dialogue, how to move for a theater piece.
So I will try to keep both media [dance and film], but I’ll disappear for a year from the stage when I make the film.
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