Hofesh Shechter interview: ‘The British are all for classical ballet, but they think dance is too arty'

Hofesh Shechter thinks we are confused by modern dance. 'People are misguided,' he says. 'English audiences, in particular, expect to come in, understand it, and have a good conversation about it afterwards.'
The Israeli-born, soon-to-be-British choreographer would prefer people to approach contemporary dance 'more like a concert' – something you experience 'through your senses'. He adds: 'You never go to a classical concert thinking, I'm going to draw a conclusion at the end and then I will say one clever sentence to the person next to me.''
Since exploding onto the British scene nearly two decades ago with pieces like Uprising (which plays with masculine identity) and Political Mother (about indoctrination and totalitarianism), 49-year-old Shechter has shaken up modern dance. His shows, renowned for their booming soundtracks, which he often composes, can feel like a rock concert, although his latest artistic collaboration saw him co-direct a play.
In Oedipus at the Old Vic, with Matthew Warchus, his dancers made a wordless, electrifying Greek chorus, punctuating Sophocles's drama like an excess of exclamation marks. Their contribution was exhilarating and visceral, words Shechter uses again and again to describe his work, as we chat over tea (a soothing lemon and ginger with honey for his sore throat) in London's Groucho Club.
Shechter's input was a huge hit, enlivening an oddly stilted production that featured a critically mauled Rami Malek as Oedipus. The experience was 'a bit of a suicide mission', he says about doing something new with such a well-known text. 'How did I feel? It was a really great challenge! I was frustrated! People really did their best with a mass of curiosity and love to the art forms,' he adds.
I wonder if British audiences, with our love for classical ballet and musicals, struggle with contemporary dance.
Shechter blames the terminology. 'People watch dance in a theatre, which is a misleading word here because a theatre is a place where stories are told and narratives are given and people feel like they should understand something.' It's more helpful, he adds, to think about contemporary dance in terms of 'dreaming at night', which both does and does not explain why his newest creation, which premiered at Sadler's Wells last autumn, is called Theatre of Dreams.
Not that Shechter is in the business of explaining much when it comes to his productions. 'I always prefer for people to know nothing,' he says. With the second UK outing for Theatre of Dreams coming up at the Brighton Festival, audiences can expect to lose themselves in a pulsating dreamworld that ricochets between fantasy and nightmare, enlivened by endless lighting-enhanced 'jump cuts', something of a Shechter trademark. It's folk dance meets clubland, with a score co-written by Shechter and his regular collaborator Yaron Engler. Or in his words: 'It's like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. It's going to play with your mind, it's going to play with your heart, it's going to play with your thoughts. Let it. Ride the wave and let go,' he says, his tuneful accent a gentle fusion of Israeli, French and the odd bit of American ('gonna').
It's hard to fathom the speed of Shechter's success looking back. Five years after arriving in London by Eurostar to work as a jobbing drummer in late 2002, his nascent company was headlining shows at Sadler's Wells. The internet boom helped – he uploaded Uprising to YouTube – as well as generous Arts Council funding. 'I think the visceral nature of the work, the honesty, the rawness of it, is what people connected to,' he says.
Born in Jerusalem in 1975, Shechter was brought up by his father after his parents divorced. He did some folk dance at school but discovered ballet aged 15. 'That's very late. I was horrible at it,' he says. He stuck with dance, joining the junior company of Tel Aviv-based Batsheva, Israel's main contemporary dance company. Dancing gave him a special status, so he 'didn't really serve' with the Israel Defence Force, which is mandatory for Israeli citizens: 'I was this kind of a cleric in a high school.' In any case, he soon left, quitting both Batsheva and Israel. 'I didn't want to be there. The politics is way too loud, and it's a small place.' He hasn't visited for a while. 'Not since the war started. I have two little girls [aged 10 and 12] and it's all very distressing for them.'
Shechter, who is lithe and tall and could pass for one of his own dancers, has the intense air of someone who is fulfilling his fate. 'What interests me is to make people feel connected through music and dance. I feel that it's an important mission that can melt the problematic nature of politics, which is polarising,' he says, never less than earnest. He likens the power of dancing with an audience to 'a ceremony… like the high priests, thousands of years ago'. The 'weirdness' of dance obsesses him. 'For me, it's a place to really explore the big unknowns. Dance is a great medium to look at stuff like death that we can talk about but we'll never understand.'
Dance is also fun, something that comes across well in the 2022 movie En Corps (Rise, in English), a love letter to contemporary dance by the French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch that features both his company and Shechter himself; he persuades an injured young Parisian ballerina, Marion Barbeau (a principal dancer with Paris Opera) to swap ballet for a role in his company after she injures her ankle. It didn't get a UK release ('English people, right?') but is a must-stream.
In reality, it's rare for classical dancers to make the switch to contemporary. 'They hold themselves very straight and my work is about flow and [being] gooey,' says Shechter, who is just back from touring Theatre of Dreams in Korea. In Britain, dancers come to contemporary dance 'very late', which puts them at a disadvantage compared to their European, Asian or American contemporaries. He adds: 'The culture here is very traditional – it encourages classical ballet or musical theatre but contemporary dance is [seen as] a bit too arty.' More young people should dance, full stop, he thinks. 'I feel that young people might be lost for purpose and I think dance is a great one in focusing people back to your body, to life, to the simple things.'
In From England With Love, a recent piece for his junior company, Shechter II, his subject was the fractured state of his adopted homeland (he is soon to become a British citizen; 'I want to be able to vote.') He has no plans for a similar sister piece about Israel. 'There is too much nuance, there is too much argument, there is too much disagreement. It doesn't interest me as an artist to go there,' he says. Despite having something of a reputation for work with a political bent, he insists that it 'happens in the dust of politics… It looks at people in the shadow of the social structures that we created. We did our best and they're still quite sh-tty.'
He wants to reprise his earlier creations. 'I'd rework them a bit, but bring them back. A lot of this work is unfortunately still relevant. I say unfortunately because all these works are dealing with the oppression and the survival of human beings inside the wonderful and pathetic structures we have created for ourselves.'
Just remember: it's fine not to understand what you're watching.

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