Interview Amy O Neal and Christian Rizzo Recorded at On the Boards, Sep 3, 2010 Amy O Neal: So you re in Taipei now? Christian Rizzo: yes AO: What are you working on there? CR: In fact I ve been coming here every year for 5 years now, and actually I m more connecting..like the more visual - the part of my work which is in more of the visual field. And especially at this moment I m trying to do things with a young artist that I met 5 years ago - this is gonna be our 4th or 5th time collaborating together. AO: Cool. CR: So we re trying things. I like to be here, then I can escape from Europe for a while. AO: We all live to escape from home! CR: I m only mad about the food here. AO: I ve never been to Taipei, I would love to go. CR: It s a very nice city. AO: Is it very clean? CR: Yeah AO: I ve heard this. CR: Yeah. It s just a bit - it could be ugly because I think they didn t pay any attention about the architecture [...] for the town. But the people are very, very friendly and it s quite easy to live here. It s like a huge town because it s almost 3 million people, but sometimes it can be very calm, very quiet, very easygoing. AO: Nice. So you maybe have a little bit of resting time. CR: And they have a quite interesting residency program. So when we meet we can talk about it! AO: I would love this. CR: Because it is the first time I came it was the residency program, and after I keep going, because I did a piece for a dance company here and I was also teaching at a university, so I m
trying every year to move the project to try to see all the different things we can do. AO: I would love to know more about this. It sounds fascinating. CR: I would give you the contact. AO: Cool. I m really excited to talk to you because I saw your work in 2006 at OtB and that s the only thing I ve seen of your work because I know you re not over here very often and it s been a very long time since I ve been in Europe and I didn t see your work when I was there, but I was really taken with it and had many interesting conversations with people afterwards. So I have questions from OtB that they want me to ask you, and then I have a couple questions of my own, because I m coming definitely from a movement background but also I m very visual as well and wear many hats so I m really interested in all of those things about yourself. So I guess the first question I want to ask you, knowing a little bit about your background, being a punk rock artist, fashion designer, model maker, set designer...maybe you can name off some other hats that you wear as an artist. CR: I think it s a little complex even for me! In fact I never name the thing. I know that I am someone - I need to create forms. Because I think when I look at the world, I have the feeling that something is not going very well for me. So I think I need to create forms that can also be a kind of theater for myself to look at the world after. Like to organize my whole vision. And to perhaps try to understand more what I m looking around me. But I have to be sure also that each time I m choosing a media, it s the right media for what I have in my mind at this moment. So it s not because I m a choreographer that each time I have an idea I have to do a dance piece, for example. It has to be - between the meaning - the form, and the media - has to be - think - in the same time. So sometimes it s like I have to do a costume, for a dance piece, or now I m trying these 3D movies...but I think it s like...i remember when I was a child, I was doing that. And I think children are doing that. It s like you are looking something, something to be like a starter for young imagination, and from that you are just following the starter, and then it creates a space, or a character, or just keeps running in the street (laughing), I mean...and I think I have this way to work which is more connnected because I m not working with a conceptual idea, but a more instinctive way of working, working with the material. I don t have almost any ideas before working. Which means that...sometimes...i don t know, I m just someone who s walking in the world, looking at things, and creating forms. AO: That s the simple answer, right? Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. And I m curious about how you came to movement-based work in your life, like - when did that happen for you? And where? Where was the impulse coming from? CR: I think it started also with childhood. I think I was - it s funny because I think I recieved, like one week ago, I think, a very old movie from someone in my family. And it is really funny because we are a lot of kids, and we are dancing on the terrace, or - I don t know - it was in the 60 s, 68, or 69. And it s funny because you can see all the kids just jumping, and in the middle I m really dancing, like trying to organize movement, but it s very complex...and finally I say, wow, I know why I m doing what I m doing! (laughter) when it stopped. So I think I had this idea, like - it s like this idea of what I said before, I like to create things and the body was perhaps the first material that I had because I had an easier connection with this material. Because it was me. So I think the idea of the movement started from me but also with me - as
almost like a double or a mirror thing. I was my first tool, in a way. But through that I met the dance field a little bit by chance, and when I met the French choreographer Mathilde Monnier and the American choreographer who lived in France, Matt Tompkin and I worked a long time with them, but it s funny because when I met these people I had the feeling that I wasn t in the right place. I was doing more like visual art before, and rock...but I had this feeling - it s not that I met the dance as a practice, but more as a space, in fact. And I found that it was the right space because it was an open space. I had the feeling that I had my right place in this very strange space where everything was connecting with movement and at the same time trying to say something and in the same time trying to understand that the body has the possibility of working in a kind of abstract way. Not with a story, or fiction, but just trying to organize some parts and from these steps trying to understand that we are building something, even if I cannot name what is this something, but I understood very quickly that it was something important. AO: That s really cool to hear. Going into the subject of the piece that you re bringing to OtB in October, which is the solo for Julie - what about Julie inspired you to create this performance? CR: I met her in the Ballet de Lyon, the opera ballet. I was invited to do a group piece there some years ago and when I was working with a group, each time Julie was in the group and I was sure that after this piece I had to do something with her. I was super impressed each time she was doing something, just even walking on the stage. I was literally mad at her. I had the feeling that each time she was doing something very simple it was always at the right moment, in the right place, with the right movements. It was like she had a super clever body. I had the feeling that I can feel her intelligence through the body. And that was for me a big shock also, because a lot of time you think that intelligence is connected with language, or about what you know, about your knowledge. And that was really like a neat kind of knowledge of course, and I can see this kind of knowledge with her, the body knowledge, and I can feel her, really. I didn t know her, but I had the feeling that I can touch her background story on each movement she was doing. So finally when I had the opportunity to create a new piece some years ago for Montpelier Danse, the festival, very quickly I said, ok, but it has to be a solo for Julie. But I didn t have any ideas, as usual, the only idea was to work with and for her. AO: Yeah, it s really rare to find that connection with someone. And even as an audience member, it s really rare that you see someone that has that depth of the intelligence of what you re speaking of. CR: Yeah but I remember she was a little afraid of me doing the group piece because she was just walking and afterwards I was just saying, just keep going walking! Because I can really see that for hours! AO: That s beautiful! I was reading a little description about the piece, and I was really struck with - I read that you re asking the question of how do we look at a woman alone onstage outside of her community? I m really really fascinated by this and I d love for you to speak about that. CR: For me it started also with the idea of solo. Basic thing of a solo - at the moment, someone is alone. And it s really rare in the community when you see someone alone. For me it s a lot of the time connected with - I don t know the name in English - abandonded? I thought of her from
this point - a moment - a woman is alone onstage. The whole piece. It was also for me like, why did I choose her? And why also I decide to create this solo. So very quickly, I think we had this - it started from that - and a woman is almost like an icon finally. Because she is just alone, so we have to create a kind of character. It s a story for a woman who is alone but it s more like an icon, because she s just - she s not really abandonned onstage, but she tries to keep going, kind of a ritual of lonliness. That s for me the biggest point in the piece. AO: That s interesting, hearing the ritual of the lonliness. Because that s something, when I saw you perform here in 2006, those were some words that very much came to my head, and something I appreciate about your work, that there s an intimacy of seeing someone s personal ritual, and the ability to put that onstage in a way that doesn t feel alienating to the audience I feel is really rare. because sometimes you can watch a solo performance and it can start to feel sort of self-indulgent in a way, and sometimes you - sometimes it s interesting to push those boundaries of what that is, but I always appreciate an artist who can show me something really strange and something that I cannot explain, but yet it feels very personal. CR: But I try all the time, because each time I m doing a piece, I really know, even if I don t know when I start, I m not just adding another piece to my curricuulum, but it s really because I need to do it. And when I m working, all the repetition, the rehearsal, finally, it s not to trying to understand why I need to do this piece at this moment. I m trying to discover myself throught the form. It s what I was saying before, like I know that I need to create a form at a moment, but after, I have to go to work to create this form to understand why I need it, in the same time that I created it. So each time it s a combination between a very personal thing. But I m very attached also to the form. In fact I m always saying I - but the I is the form, and the form appears because I want to say I. And especially I think with Julie, I mean because I am performing in the beginning of the solo, but I m disappearing very quickly. And - but this time it was not for me, so also it was a question, how can you be in a way of transmission of something, a kind of energy, and also to someone, and then also to create the material for and with this person. So I think this piece is also, in fact it s a ritual, it s a one hour ritual. So it s between 2 people and then one is going away. and then someone stays alone and keeps going. So it s a solo with someone who is here in the beginning, and in fact it s a very strange relationship between these 2 characters in the beginning because i think there is something - it s funny because I have the feeling that even for me this piece keeps a kind of mystery inside it that I don t understand right now. So I m very happy that we re starting to tour this piece because there is something which is behind which does not really appear to me. And each time we found that during the performance, we always say, wow, there is something very strange inside that! AO: What is this...? I love that. CR: And it s really during the performance that we have that...there is something - I think there is something more than I wanted to say. But I don t know what is this other point. But in a way I also like that because I think that this plus thing is really connecting with the performance by itself and the moment we are faced with the audience. So I think part of this, what I call the mystery, is not onstage but between the stage and the audience. AO: Absolutely. That makes sense. I m glad you brought up the relationship between what you re doing with julie onstage and the other question is the figure of the bunny man that
appears in a lot of your sketches and in your performance. And what is - what drew you to that figure? CR: Well, it s very strange because in fact it started in Taipei. In fact, I found this mask in a mask shop for kids. And I don t know...i bought it and I tried to make some pictures with it, like a potrait of myself, and I really liked this mask because it didn t fit very well, because it s for kids, so it s like a very strange thing, of course it s not really a bunny-man, it s really a man who put on a mask of a bunny. And from this point I think I had a lot of images - came behind me, even when this rabbit, when Joseph Beuys tried to explain this theory of how the rabbit - and I was saying perhaps it s the ghost of this rabbit who comes onstage - I had this image also of this movie Donnie Darko - all the characters who had this stupid ears and it s the base - perhaps also the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. It s funny because I had all these rabbit characters around me in my own history of imagination. And it s a combined thing...but if you see this character, it s also that he had this bunny face, but he had the top dressed almost from the 19th century. And then in the back he s really like almost a skater. He has sneakers and huge denim pants. He s almost falling. So it s a very strange combination. But I think it s really also me - I know that I build myself with a lot of influence also from skater things and punk rock things and things from the 19th century, perhaps even Disneyland, when I was a kid - even things that you want to evacuate - that you feel inside, it s almost your DNA. AO: Do you skate? CR: No, but I love to see people do it. I love this energy, and I think also connnected with the youth, that I like a lot. AO: Yeah. I could watch that all day, myself. CR: So I think it s a combination, and at the same time it s like this person, like almost a ghost, or - and of course, a lot of the time in rituals you also have a mask. So even Julie onstage would change a little bit her face. So when you see Julie in this piece, it s not the face she has of course in real life. So it s almost like in the beginning, 2 characters who are a little bit out of time, in a way. because she has a face more connnected with the Flemish paintings of the 17th century, I think, and she s almost dressed like - very minimal, black, super high heels in metal, so it s at the same time for me kind of like [...] it could be like an old science-fiction thing. In a minimal way! AO: I saw a little bit of a video excerpt from the piece and I can definitely see everything you re talking about. CR: It s like when I decided to write this piece it s almost like a calligraphic piece. You see that the Chinese are drawing words - but not by adding things, it s a calligraphy made with a subtraction idea. To let appear the emptiness around her and then with the emptiness around her she can reveal herself. So I know that people thought I was really focused on the writing of the dance also. For example, she s dancing all the time, from the beginning to the end without any stop. And we can thing that it s a loop that she s doing but it s not because it s changing all the time. It s writing as a spiral, but a spiral that is trying to join the central point, not going outside but going inside. It s the first time also that I had this very formal context in writing the piece. AO: How does that feel for you?
CR: I think I did it also because I was really in confidence with Julie. So she helped me also to do the steps. AO: I have a question about this term in Europe called non-danse. We don t have that - well I have not seen it so much in - CR: Well in a way, we dont have to. It came from a journalist in France and I think she was a little bit lost about everything which is going on. And one time she wrote this term of non-danse but connected with this generation of choreographers. Jerome Bel, [etc] But we didn t understand that because we just keep go on dancing in our own way. Of course we knew that we perhaps had to re-start from a new base, and we add more posture than movement, but it was more, I think - I mean, I can speak for me, but I was more involved at this moment to already create a movement inside my body and let the movement appear outside than the opposite, just provoking movement, to put movement in the space. I had the need to understand how it was working inside me before going out. So of course a lot of posture would appear. And I think also, for me, coming from the visual arts, I was not focused only on the movement, but I was focused on the body inside the space connected with the sound and the light. So of course the movement was not only on the body but on all the tools I have. So I think for some people they say, ah, but it s not dancing anymore. And I had my answer each time when people say it s not dance! and I say, perhaps you re right, but I m sure that it s choreography. Perhaps it s not dance - but I think dance - and I am not sure that I am involved in dance because for me dance is connected with a dancer. The thing that I like, and which is my job, is to make the choreography, which is writing the movement in the space and not just writing movement. And for me, dance - everybody is dancing. The biggest problem is how to write the dance after. For me dance is a material. So after, it s like when you, I don t know, when you use a painting and after you paint the painting is the material and after you transformed this material to choreography. So I think there is - we cannot say that there is non-danse - if there is non-danse it means that there is no material, which is not possible. If it was like non-choreography, I couldn t stand it this term. We could have a real fight on that. But non-danse for me means nothing, because you cannot say that - we are joking a lot after, because now we say that you have to invent a yes-danse. But I think it was more a term -because it came like 10 years ago - and I think it was really the moment where the people, the journalists, the producers, were totally lost about what is happening. And they had to create a box. And also it was a matter to have the power on it. Because a lot of times we had this - by period you can say, ah, there is this kind of movement, there is this kind of movement. But at this moment there is not really movement. There is only people doing their own jobs. So it was very confusing for people, coming from the rock or visual art scene, another one coming from a dance scene, another one saying I m involved now in how to destroy postmodernism - and that was not a movement, it was only singular forms. So it was very complicated I think for the people to understand what s happening. So they say, ok, it s nondanse! and we have a box. And then we can do a festival of them and write about non-danse. AO: Well I just - I can t believe it was the first time I ever heard of that. CR: It was very funny for us - it s funny because it s always starting from a journalist. When you see the punk movement, it was this journalist who said, what is this band it s like punk
music and finally after we put all these kind of musicians on the punk scene and blah blah blah, but it never comes from the artist. AO: Yeah, I don t know any artist who is like I am this genre and this is how I m gonna describe it. So I have one more question for you, you ve begun to work in the field of opera more and what has the shift been like for you? CR: Huge! (laughs) But I think it was a big shift and at the same time a very easy shift. I think it was a big shift because at the same time it stopped to be a very huge production - which also I m saying that because the production always has a lot of influence in your work, all the time. If you don t have money, you know what you are doing and if you have a lot of money you know what you are doing also. So it s very connected, like economy and artistic things. So I had to change also in a way how to work because you cannot work a long time with the singers. I had the singer for just 4 days. So you have to prepare everything before, which is for me very strange because I never prepare to work because I love to work with the people and find with the people what s gonna happen. So that for me was a really big shift because I had to prepare one year before, what s gonna happen onstage. which is totally crazy and in a way too visual (?) for me. So to be more confident I decided to include dancers in these 3 operas, and then I can work with them, with the sceneography and the sets and the dancer to create all the space around the singers. So in a way I can do that of course. And also the big shift for me was the reality of the opera, which is that each opera has a story. And I never work with stories! And the language also, explaining what s happening. So I had all these questions for me, where was exactly the idea of the fiction? If it was in what the singer sang or if it was around them? Who is holding the fiction? Is it the singer, is it the space, is it the connection between the space and the music and finally the singer is in the middle of that? So it started to give me a lot of questions to think about it. And also in my own aesthetic, I can push this opera at home in a way. But it was - I was a little bit frightened when I started but the more we were going on in the work more finally I said, but I m already doing operas, but without singers! At the end for me the approach to opera was not very far because I think I was not really far from it. AO: I would say that was, from what I know of you, I saw a youtube clip of an opera you d done recently with plants, and there was a dancer with a backpack and the singer sitting at the table, and it does make sense, seeing that and hearing what you re saying, I think your aesthetic is translating quite well into that arena. CR: Yeah, because already, I m always saying, when I m doing my pieces, there s always a connection between the space, the people onstage, the music, the tension between all these tools, so finally I was just missing the real presence of the singers. And the story. So at the end it was not very - depending, because also I was in a contemporary opera at this time. But now I m gonna direct Wagner next year. So I m working on Tannheuser at this time. And it s another story! I have to confess, now I m very frightened! And also because it s a lot of singers...each time - well the last opera I did, the last 3 operas were with only 1 singer. So it was the idea of a solo, and I know how to deal with that. AO: The opera that you re going to be working on, the Wagner opera, is this going to be the first time you re working with a really large group? CR: Yeah, because I think there are 8 important singers. But then you have the chorus. And there
are 90! Which means there is going to be 100 on stage! But I like this, I did a lot of - I think I am alwasy between that. I love the solo piece and the group piece. I don t know how to deal with, like, 3 people. I think because the group - or one - is the question I have about the world I m in. For me, 3 people, doesn t mean nothing for me. It s only the idea of the community and someone. And how they are facing each other. So how one person tries to be in the community or not. And how the community accepts one or not. So I think it s always that in the world. So 3 people, 4 people, it s like a little family. A basic, normal family. AO: It s a family or it s a love triangle. Either one! CR: Yeah! That s another thing. (laughter) But three s already a group. It s a question for my next piece. Perhaps I can say something about the title. AO: Yes, I m glad you said that, because that was the other thing that I wanted you to talk about. CR: In fact there is a real story behind this name, which is b.c. - the initials of Benvenuto Cellini, he was a sculptor during the Rennaissance in France, an Italian. And in January, the date 1545 he had a command from the king to deliver 2 sculptures. But this sculptor didn t have the desire or the time to do it so he just delievered one sculpture at this moment in fontainebleau. And he knew that he couldn t show the 2 sculptures, so he decided to show - he started to put little movement and lighting in the sculpture. Almost like the beginning, it could be the beginning of the automat. And the people were so mad about it that they totally forgot that the command was for 2 sculptures. And in fact what I like in this little history, which is already in the 16th century, it could be the start of what we now call like trans-disciplinary arts, like we have the sculpture but we start to put lights and movement and it s already like the beginning of a hybrid way of showing things. Because in France we have all the time like things like dance with art, and music stuff almost like Black Mountain with no screening I m always saying that it is for our very close history, but I think for a long time we tried to develop some way how to show things using different tools together to create one moment, specific one moment. So that was also, when I choose also this title, it was a little bit tricky for myself to always say, but ok, perhaps can I say, because we are special in France, we have all this generation always refering to the visual art thing, but only the artists who started from the 50s or 60s. And I think perhaps if we are really involved in that perhaps we can go a little bit deeper in the more large history of art to understand what we are doing today and not only our last 60 years. In fact it was a little bit of a job also, because if I give this name for sure the people are going to ask me, so I can say that. And it s funny for me because I say all the time, like people like Trisha Brown, Pina Bausch, and of course, I love this work, it s very important for me, but it cannot be the only influence in history. If you consider dance, that dance is also connected with the biggest ideas of the art field, including the art field - so you have to understand what is happening before and I think it can be very influenced by what is happening in the last 60 years, but I m more coming from the Romantic painting of the 19th century and, I don t know, some like Middle Age things, and all these things are connected to understand the world today. And for me to just understand the last 50 years, it s not enough. AO: Is there anything else that you d like to say? CR: I m very happy to come back in Seattle. It s really true! I really enjoyed the last time we
were in Seattle and I really enjoyed discovering the town and I really enjoyed the Market. And I have to find, what we didn t find it the last time we were looking with Lane, the grave of Kurt Cobain. AO: Oh...where is he buried? CR: And nobody knows where it is? AO: We all know where Bruce Lee is...and Jimi Hendrix is south of SEattle, but I don t know where Kurt is. CR: The first time I came I said to Lane, I m really happy to come to Seattle, because I want to see the grave of Kurt Cobain. But we never saw it! So I have to come back this time. And I hope we didn t find it, then I can come back again. It s gonna be the topic! AO: It s the holy grail. We re really excited too. I know my fellow artists in Seattle are all abuzz and really excited too because people are still bringing up the performance you did last time. So we re excited that you re coming. CR: And I m really happy to be coming with this specific piece too, Because the first time I came I was onstage, so it was very - this piece is for me - I m not a staple, so I have the feeling that something is going on, but it changed also in the form, that I like. ontheboards.org