The choreographer Hofesh Shechter is a good-value interviewee. He’ll cheerfully compare himself to a vampire or the risen messiah. (He’s describing how he’d rather not sit in direct sunlight and how he could possibly top Hofest, a London-wide festival of his work.) He eloquently discusses his propulsive dance. And with minimal prompting, he’ll launch feet first into controversy.
In April, the Israeli-born artist joined Akram Khan and DV8’s Lloyd Newson in lambasting the “disheartening” state of training at Britain’s most prestigious contemporary dance schools. The three choreographers said they commonly look abroad for recruits, as UK graduates are “consistently outclassed” and unprepared for a demanding career. Dance rarely makes headlines: that day, it did.
With his use of percussion, his banks of electric guitars that shake the room and his mosh-pit fervour, Shechter is used to attracting attention. A grandiose, access-all-postcodes project such as Hofest — encompassing Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice for the Royal Opera, a gig-style Political Mother at Brixton Academy, a premiere at Sadler’s Wells and his new apprentice company at Stratford Circus (October 1-2) — may be cruising for a backlash. But, sitting in the shadows in the National Theatre foyer, the tall, questing Shechter marvels at his trajectory.
“My career as a choreographer was like a rocket,” he says. “Eight minutes in the earth’s atmosphere, then into deep space.” He stumbled off the Eurostar as an unknown 26-year-old on New Year’s Day 2002 — “pushing two heavy trolleys across London because I couldn’t afford a cab” — but within five years was headlining at Sadler’s Wells. “End of story.”
His energy and work ethic add authority to his long-fermenting fears about British training. Like his fellow choreographers, he found the leading colleges (London Contemporary Dance School, Trinity Laban and Northern School of Contemporary Dance) reluctant to engage with concerns that echo across higher education in the tuition-fee era. “These schools charge high fees and are dependent on their ‘clients’ — not ‘students’,” he says. “They are training people towards something mediocre. It is not ambitious. It’s about keeping the business going. Of course there are talented people, but they’re not being pushed.”
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He urges a new teaching cadre, open to current choreography, and a new attitude among students. He huffs at wannabes who think the profession is cool. “There’s nothing cool about it,” he scoffs. “There are people in China, Belgium, Australia who are working hard to become a dancer. It’s a jungle out there.”
What does he seek in a dancer? His style is so visceral, so stompingly intense, I expect him to extol physical strength and technique. Instead, he talks about character. “Essentially, it’s the ability to express themselves, to really go for it. I look for a connection — that we share the same energy. And that they’re nice people, because I have to live with them 24/7.”
Wiry and teasing, Shechter couldn’t seem less of a hippie, but his dancers confirm that building a company is an emotional business. “He’s careful about who he brings in,” says Winifred Burnet-Smith, a longtime company member. “You can be a really kick-ass dancer, but still not fit in.” As her colleague Bruno Guillore describes it: “Movement, you can learn. Personality, you can’t.”
Shechter’s dancers contribute to new works such as Barbarians, the Sadler’s Wells premiere. “I can pull work from out of my insides,” he says graphically, “but I’m limited. I also have to push out work from my dancers — it’s a collaboration with their bodies and minds.”
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Guillore, originally from Cairo, danced with Hofesh before he was Hofesh. “By chance, we did the same class together, and afterwards we started chatting,” he recalls. “He was really nice, just a young guy making his work.” Guillore is now associate artistic director. “In big organisations, things get compromised, but we’re much lighter. Everything is set up towards the optimum way of working and treating the dancers, making the best work we can.”
What’s it like for visitors to Planet Hofesh? Last spring, Untouchable was Shechter’s first encounter with the Royal Ballet, whose style is quite unlike his own. “At first, to be honest, I thought it wasn’t going to happen,” he says. “It was like we were in different dialling codes.” As Moira McCormack, a physiotherapist at the Royal Ballet, explains, classical dancers have “spent their whole career being light and airbound. Shechter’s style demands low-slung, grounded movement.”
“There was a teething process,” admits Matthew Ball, one of the Royal Ballet’s emerging talents. “It’s not even on the scale. It’s an energy in your entire body, which doesn’t stop morphing and moving. We were so invested — there was so much to explore, so many possibilities. When the music and the flow came together, we were locked into it. It was quite primal.” And, as Shechter puts it: “They worked their asses off.”
Working like a demon so you can dance like a dervish: that may be the quality he prizes above all. It motivated his new apprentice company, Shechter Junior, “a bridge between education and the professional world. That’s how it happened for me [as an apprentice with Batsheva, Israel’s premier dance company].” Unsparing commitment is expected of the nine youngsters (three are British), but “they’re paid — a survival salary, but you’ll stay alive, because if you don’t pay apprentices, you only get rich kids. I want this to be open to anyone.”
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Orphée et Eurydice, ROH, London WC2, from Sept 14; Barbarians, Sadler’s Wells, London EC1, Sept 18-25; Political Mother, O2 Academy Brixton, London SW9, Oct 7-8