Dancing the Sublime

Raimund Hoghe has brought his singular dance aesthetic to audiences on several continents since he began making performances two decades ago. Starting out as a journalist for the German newspaper Die Zeit, where he published many portraits of artistic figures and reports on social groups outside the mainstream, by now compiled in several books, Hoghe also worked with Pina Bausch as dramaturg for Tanztheater Wuppertal in the period 1980–1990. Der Buckel, an hour-long self-portrait of the dancer, who draws from sources as eclectic as classical ballet, visual art, Butoh, literature, and popular music, was shown on German television. Often working with his artistic collaborator, Luca Giacomo Schulte, he has directed and choreographed solo works for himself and others, such as 36, Avenue Georges Mandel, incorporating performances and interviews of Maria Callas, and L'Après-midi, using Debussy's composition; duo pieces, such as Sacre—The Rite of Spring; and several other dances for his international company, including Swan Lake, 4 Acts and Boléro Variations. Hoghe's company evokes a sense of refinement and uncompromising beauty in a highly symbolic vocabulary of movement, distilled through poetic images and objects in space. At the center of this dance, with its honoring of dance history, is Raimund Hoghe, a hunchback, whose expressive presence and standards of artistry expand perceptual modes of viewing the performing body. He was voted Dancer of the Year in 2008 by ballettanz. In September 2009 Hoghe and his company brought their work to New York for the first time as part of the French Institute Alliance Française Crossing the Line festival at Dance Theatre Workshop. Our conversation took place during the run of the performances, on September 24; subsequently, we spoke again in Spain in November, and a few remarks from that conversation are also included here.

I would like to welcome you to New York City. I have to say it's a sad commentary that your work has never been seen in the United States before now. Dance is such a prominent art form on the continent, and many new works don't make it over here, or appear years after their premiere. So, let me begin then, in terms of introducing you to American readers and to our international audience who don't know of the work, by asking—who are you?

My first profession is a writer. I was writing for newspapers and published several books. And I was working for ten years in the late seventies and eighties as a dramaturg for Pina Bausch. First I was writing about her and then she asked me to work with her for the pieces, and there was a ten-year collaboration with Pina. After the work with Pina, I started to do solo pieces for dancers. As a writer I made many portraits of people, and when I did the solo pieces it was also a kind of portrait of the dancer—but onstage, not a written portrait.

How did you work as a dramaturg in dance? Obviously, this gives your own work a certain structure and narrative sense.

With Pina it was a very personal collaboration. She didn't work before with a dramaturg, and also after I left she didn't work with anyone. It was really that we were looking for the same kind of things. I came from another area. When I was working for her, I still was doing my writing for the weekly paper Die Zeit in Germany, for radio and some television projects. But it was a personal collaboration. I brought some music, and texts sometimes, which she used in the performances. But most of all I was there to help with the structure, to put things together.

When I said, "Who are you?" I meant it in the sense of you as a person? Someone who would move from dramaturgy to doing your own performances. What changes occurred within you to make you go on the stage?

First of all, at school I was as an extra onstage in the city theatre in Wuppertal, where I was born. I...