“I can still dance away from the boys”

Wim Vandekeybus doesn’t like to think about the past. But he did it for 35 Ultima Vez – for a new one.

“Thirty-five years is a long time,” says Wim Vandekipus. In 1987, at the premiere, the 24-year-old left-wing audience and critics dazzled with his first piece, “What the Body Can’t Remember.” What an angry scenario. What a physical strength. frank break. It was an introduction to something new in contemporary dance. In New York, he was awarded a Bessie Award with composers Thierry de Mee and Peter Vermeersch for this “brutal confrontation of dance, music, dangerous atmosphere and camp,” according to the jury. In the year of the premiere, Vandekeybus came to Vienna with the piece. He has been a regular guest at the ImPulsTanz Festival for almost a long time. again this year.

Vandekeybus, who first studied psychology and then played one of the two naked kings in Jean Fabre’s The Power of Theater Madness for two years before founding his company Ultima Vez in 1986, today sees himself as a much better organised (some theaters desperately requested this factor according to to a strict schedule and nightly rest periods), but it wasn’t made clear: “Maybe I have a childish way of thinking. That’s why I also recognize things.”