Wim Vandekeybus curates December Dance

This early success was a combination of youthful revolution, timing – European dance was still looking for the choreographers who would bridge the postmodern and the contemporary – and intuition. Talent, if it exists, must be a kind of intuition.

What the Body Does Not Remember turned 25 this year (while Vandekeybus turned 50) and toured the world to both repeat and new audiences. “It’s a sure thing,” he says, and that’s why he’s chosen it to open this year’s December Dance festival in Bruges. (He’s not wrong. As we went to press, there was just one lone ticket left.)

Bruges’ annual festival of contemporary dance features a specific country or regional area one year and a famed curator the next. Its six previous editions have seen London’s Akram Khan and Flanders’ own Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui set the programme. Now it’s Vandekeybus’ turn. The festival begins and ends with Ultima Vez.

And there is plenty of that on the programme. One of the  highlights is Meduses, an ingenious blend of dance and graffiti art. Not just the people of Bruges will have never heard of choreographer Vincent Glowinski – no one has. He was a street artist known only as Bonom – Belgium’s answer to Banksy, if you will – until Vandekeybus saw what he could do in a late-night, back-room setting a couple of years ago during Brussels’ Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

“It was the most interesting thing I had seen in years,” says Vandekeybus. He eventually took Bonom in, and Meduses is the result of a year-long residency . Through the use of software specifically developed for the practice, Bonom makes ghostly drawings appear through the movement of his body – though sometimes it seems that the images are making him dance.

Another production that has yet to be seen is Stones in Her Mouth (pictured above). It has only ever been performed once – for an avant-premiere in Los Angeles. The Bruges performance is the official world premiere of the tour. By New Zealand choreographer Lemi Ponifasio and his MAU company, it features 10 women, who tell the story of the indigenous Maori people and their suffering under oppressive European settlers.

MAU has performed in Belgium before but never in Bruges. “It is an amazing show, it’s so weird,” says Vandekeybus. “It’s really a culture shock. Lemi works very rigorously with his dancers, and sometimes it’s like they’re not even people. They transform. They slide over the stage as if they have wheels under their feet.”

It also fits in with a general theme running through this year’s December Dance – music and soundscapes. “Ponifasio doesn’t use music,” says Vandekeybus, “but he’s super musical. The dancers themselves create the sound. It was important to me to have this link between all the performances – those who are working with voice and sound.”

In keeping with his own priority, he’s re-choreographed What the Body Does Not Remember to stage it with live music, provided by the Brussels-based Ictus new music ensemble.

The festival ends, meanwhile, with Ultima Vez in Spiritual Unity, a kind of compilation of the last five years, weaved together in a brand new production, also with live music. Vandekeybus is putting the group of musicians – including Mauro Pawlowski and Roland Van Campenhout – on a stage in the middle of the crowd. “Like a rock show,” he smiles. “But it’s a big risk. I’m doing it especially for this festival. Bruges is a bit of a serious audience; they’re not super interactive. So you have to put your hands in the fire and say ‘hey people, wake up!’”

Spiritual Unity essentially tells the story of the last half-decade of Ultima Vez; the rest of the productions – which also include Jan Fabre’s three-hour opera Tragedy of a Friendship and Canadian Frédérick Gravel’s behind-the-scenes look at show business Gravel Works – tell their own unique stories. Because “dance in itself doesn’t exist,” says Vandekeybus. “It’s always part of something else. You have to transport something with it; it’s a communication medium. People are dancing because they are expressing their happiness or their sadness. That’s how I work with dance.”

4-15 December
Across Bruges
www.decemberdance.be