Jeroen Verbruggen in Geneva: "In front of "The Nutcracker", I am like a child"

Beneath its romantic nonchalance, the liveliness of a puma with blue eyes. Belgian dancer and choreographer Jeroen Verbruggen, 36, has this feline elegance. A softness in the pupil. A wild appetite which makes him chain the parts, in Saint-Petersburg, Monte-Carlo, Helsinki, in Basel also these days. He is rehearsing The Badly Kept Girl there – premiering this weekend at the Basel Theater. At the same time, this former soloist of the Ballet de Monte-Carlo is watching over the revival at the Grand Théâtre on Saturday of a stunning Nutcracker of dark fantasy.

Read also: Our review of “The Nutcracker” when it premiered in 2014

In the middle of the night, it is this dream hemmed with dread that we are talking about, this magical Christmas emerging from a tale by ETA Hoffmann, transfigured by Tchaikovsky in 1892. It is 11 p.m. in Basel and Jeroen is finally breathing , after a day of healing the commas of his new show. We think we're the sugar plum fairy and we take a leap into the past, in those days of November 2014 when her Nutcracker came out of a haunted suitcase.

We unpack the frills of memory, the purplish fabric of a trip to Tim Burton, these crazy ball clothes – the work of stylists Livia Stoïanova and Yassen Samouilov, under the sign of On aura tout vu. In front of her baroque wardrobe, little Marie coaxed her shattered nutcracker, soon transformed into a valiant little soldier, but her escape to the other side of the mirror was hallucinated. On the slope of her initiation, she fell on faceless creatures, faced a fierce soldiery like porcupines, felt the fragility of a prince with purulent wounds, before knowing the joy of deliverance.

Le Temps: You once said that choreographing was painting. Does this mean that you proceed by images?

Jeroen Verbruggen: When I was preparing The Nutcracker, I listened to Tchaikovsky's music over and over and the visions cascaded through my mind. I saw characters, colors, materials that I transposed in the form of scribbles in my notebooks. It is all these images that nourish my work with dancers. In the studio, I show the pace to the performers and when they pick it up, I color the movement, I nuance it, I light it up or darken it. In this sense, I am a painter.

What was the first image of this “Nutcracker”?

A broken shell. Nutcracker, this little soldier transformed into a prince, is a wounded man. I had the vision of a slaughtered damoiseau. It is this vulnerability that I wanted to bring out, hence his body where the muscles, the veins, the organs protrude. The poetry that emerges from this work is extremely gentle, but also violent.

Doesn't this ambivalence define you?

I sometimes feel like a child having fun in a world that is not coherent. In what I do, there is always a lot of play.

Read again: Portrait of Jeroen Verbruggen in 2014

You once said that you like "when things aren't too smooth, when you see that they are hard". Dancing, is it assuming a share of violence?

I often push dancers to their limits, so that they become stage fighters. I find it magnificent when an exhausted performer fights to live up to the expectations of the public. There is in a body tempered by effort, by the desire to surpass itself, a great beauty. What we do mobilizes mad energy, it has to reach the viewer.

You were a soloist for the Ballet de Monte-Carlo. Which dancer were you?

I was very expressive and kamikaze. I dared a lot of very physical things that scared people. Sometimes I was in a trance on stage. I'm paying for this debauchery today, I destroyed myself faster than the others (soft adolescent laugh).

You have worked with Jan Fabre, a Flemish choreographer and visual artist whose pieces resemble ceremonies. He too favors these states of exhaustion…

One day, I was very young, he made me rehearse a sequence until I was sickened. He was never satisfied. I burst into tears and he asked me to sing a tune from my childhood in this state. I complied and he told me that's what he wanted, this truth from the depths. It was a great lesson for me: after the hundredth time, you think you have mastered a step, in reality you can go even further. It is this spirit that made me a dance bomber.

Jan Fabre is accused today of sexual humiliation and intimidation. Other choreographers are on the hot seat for harassment and verbal aggression. What inspires you?

Concerning Jan Fabre, I want to distinguish the work, of which I remain a fan, from the person. Even if this distinction is difficult today. I happened to dance for uncool choreographers. We were silent. It was another era. The world is changing and so are art practices. But it must be said that the rehearsal periods are getting shorter and shorter and that gets on the nerves. Under tension, we make mistakes. I take criticism into account and I always think I can do better.

At 16 you took part in the Prix de Lausanne and won the public prize. How did you imagine your career then?

I was naive. And very behind in my learning of classical dance as well as in my physical development. When I was offered to take part in the Prix de Lausanne, I was surprised, but happy, because it was my first trip. I then went from astonishment to astonishment: I qualified for the quarter-finals, then the semi-finals and the final. I called my parents to come and attend. They drove all night from Anderlecht. What I discovered was that I could achieve something – what, I didn't know. The Prix de Lausanne gave me a confidence that is still my treasure today.

What is a successful show?

It is a work that can be read on several levels, in which the enlightened amateur as well as the layman find their pleasure. I passionately love the show, that is to say also the lightness, the black humor. The theater remains a toy box for me.

Casse-Noisette, Geneva, Grand Théâtre, from 6 to 16 November.