“Freedom is a lesson in responsibility.”

What was your point of departure for making “Freedom Sonata”?

I do not really see the works I make as separate entities. For the past 30 years, I am always asking the same questions when I go to the studio. I just come up with different answers each time. The process keeps evolving because I may be in a different place, because of my accumulated experience, etc. Each piece then takes its shape as a by-product of the context and the people I am working with.

Does that also mean that the title did not exist at the very beginning?

No, it did not. If I could, I would keep changing the titles of my pieces all the time. I cannot do that because it would be a problem in marketing. But the choreography keeps changing all the time. When we come to Berlin, 30–40 per cent of the piece will be different compared to when we showed it last year. A lot of parts were thrown out, others changed, new ones got added. The performance is an evolving entity.

Music has always played a crucial role in your practice. For “Freedom Sonata,” you translate the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Kanye West into choreographic scores. How does that work?

The choreographic scores and rules that I produce are separate from the music. For the choreography and the music to enter into an engaging conversation, they must remain autonomous entities. I do not make choreography to illustrate the music, and I am not going to use the music to support the dance or choreography. Rather, the dancers interact with the music differently every time they do the piece. They are incentivized to look at it in real time as a form of open dialogue. So, again, if you see two performances, you will see a lot of things that are quite different.

Can you describe one of these scores for people who do not dance?

I think the easiest way to do that is by analogy: If we look at other games such as football, chess or poker, they are simply sets of rules. If you sit down at a poker table, ideally, you know the rules, otherwise you cannot play. For games like poker or chess, nobody invented the rules. They are open source and keep evolving over time. I do the same. I come up with sets of rules which I introduce to the dancers. We then practice together. Within that specific set of rules, they have clear incentives to maximize their potential of self-expression. And since the dancers are really interconnected, they also have a shared goal. They need to accomplish something together, as a group. The process is about them learning how to play that game. At one moment, somebody will break the rules and do something that I did not say they were supposed to be doing. Now, if that suggestion is improving the game, you will see at once that others are going to start to copy. There is a kind of consensus that appears around a certain break of the rules. It will then be integrated even without me saying anything. If you wanted to sum it up, it is about the difference between centralized and decentralized system: In a centralized system, there always is one source of authority only. The system is vertical and information flows from top to bottom. In a decentralized system, you also have rules, but no central authority. Each one of the players is sovereign in their decisions.

As the notions appears in your title: What is your understanding of freedom?

In my work, I do not invent a world or bend reality. I do not invent the laws of nature or of the universe; they are there. I do not invent people and social structure and human nature; they are there, too. Rather, I try to understand and align with them. The notion of freedom is just... it is a given. We are born free. Yet, most of the time throughout history, we are not free, which is an anomaly. Freedom is a given. In my work, I align with that truth. The dancers must be free to make their own decisions; I cannot take that freedom away from them. I thus ask myself: what kind of system can I put in place to makes sure that this fundamental, natural thing is not disturbed? Like this, all of us gain something. If I ask them to take a lot of responsibility, they have skin in the game. Whatever will happen depends on them. If they accept this responsibility, they are free. That is a much bigger incentive for the dancers. Freedom is a lesson in responsibility; that is what the choreography teaches you.

Why is it important to be making art about freedom at this moment in time?

actual people and their actions. When I go to the studio, I have people in front of me; not sound, not colours, not words. I ask myself: what is the best way to organize this group of people? Thus, the work becomes an immediate reflection on the biggest political questions of all time, i.e., how do we organize ourselves as people. Over time, I realized that the work is not even about my personal taste. For the dancers, their movement is a way of expressing themselves. The work is about their choices rather than anything else. If I were to decide on their movement, I would censor their speech. That is the thing with freedom, and with freedom of speech: You cannot be relative about it. If I had the power to decide what was allowed to be said, there was no freedom of speech anymore.