Concrete Playground Meets Sun Choreographer Hofesh Shechter

Over the past decade Hofesh Shechter has carved out a career as one of Britain’s most sought-after choreographers, delivering critical hits that showcase his prior talents as both a dancer and musician. Sun is the fourth show he’s brought to the Melbourne Festival, where it receives its world premiere. Before this, we spoke with Shechter from his adopted home of England.

“Sun started with trying to find something a bit lighter, more positive. I was looking at my work thinking, 'It’s very dark, everything that comes out', which has a lot to do with my circumstances in life,” he said. Shechter was brought up in Israel, where he was called up for a period of national service. Form this, he somehow managed to continue his dance training but the experience forced him to question the realities of freedom.

For Sun, he brought his initial ideas to the dancers and found they were transformed into something far more complex, with a sometimes awkward conflict between light and shade beginning to emerge. “In a way, this piece is dealing with a search for happiness," Shechter said. "Something very basic we all have — looking for a happy place under the sun. But there’s an undercurrent of danger and emotions that are much more difficult moving underneath.”

This complexity is familiar to Shechter's work, as he draws from his talents across multiple art forms. Watching footage of his work, it’s clear that his musical background in particular informs the nature of his choreography — he creates movement born inside the music. In Sun he is combining prerecorded sound with original composition. “Having that strong connection between the music and the choreography allows for a fuller, more powerful experience,” he says. “In a way it just makes my life more difficult, because making a soundscape is extremely detailed and time consuming, and with the choreography as well it becomes a bit of a monster. But very rewarding.”

He has an obvious passion for the connection between music and dance; not just because of the possibilities that stem from combining the two, but from the qualities they share closely beneath the surface. “It’s funny – when you’re making music you’re doing the job of arranging elements in time – it’s all about the relationship between one note to the other. So the two forms are very close friends and family.”

Having worked constantly for the past ten years on pure dance as well as choreography for theatre and television, Shechter has been well-placed to observe the continuing evolution of his art form. But he’s reluctant to describe the ways in which that dance has changed. “As much as I want to think that dance is a unique department in an office that we’re working together, it is in effect made out of so many events – choreographers that appear and disappear. That makes it very hard to tell whether there is real progress or whether it’s just individual people. Contemporary dance is searching for itself. It’s still not clear what it is, and that puts the art form in a very interesting place.”

Sun will be performed at the Melbourne Festival from October 11-16. Top image by Heather Judge.