Get the meat hooks, Vandekeybus is here

Speculating about his legacy recently, Wim Vandekeybus veered between the fatalistic and the uninterested. “When I die, I’m dead,” he said. “I don’t have a written technique to pass on. I would call what I’ve created a state of being, and the state will die with me.”

Not necessarily. Since founding his company, Ultima Vez, in 1986, this 44-year-old Belgian choreographer has gained a worldwide following with his distinctive brand of hyper-physical, animalistic and often violently confrontational dance-theater.

Today, choreographers from countries as diverse as Belgium, Brazil, Australia and South Korea cite Vandekeybus as a formative influence, while legions of dancers make it a priority to attend at least one Ultima Vez audition. What’s more, Vandekeybus has created a series of dance films that function as archives of his movement vocabulary.

And then there’s “Spiegel,” an Ultima Vez retrospective that UCLA Live will present this weekend at Royce Hall and that can be construed as a repository for some of the choreographer’s most memorable creations. Conceived as a commemoration of the company’s 20th anniversary, the aptly titled show (“Spiegel” means “mirror” in German, one of Belgium’s official languages) mixes and matches excerpts from six Vandekeybus works dating from 1987 to 2000.

With 90 minutes of stage time, the Ultima Vez dancers throw bricks at one another, hang from meat hooks, get naked and, above all, perform Vandekeybus’ signature high-velocity rolling, jumping, sprinting and partnering -- all of which could be put to good use in a take-no-prisoners coed wrestling match.

SINCE its premiere in Brussels in 2006, “Spiegel” has garnered both raves and dismissals from European critics, who seem of two minds about the work’s unflaggingly explosive energy level and relentless blurring of the line between choreography and combat. Some have found it mesmerizing and/or the equivalent of a great roller-coaster ride. Others have called the experience an unnecessary assault on the senses.

After all, “there is a great deal to make the spectator flinch in this show -- you almost feel the bruises vicariously,” wrote a critic from Britain’s Independent newspaper, who lauded the work for precisely that reason.

Critical response, however, doesn’t mean much to Vandekeybus, who says he rarely reads reviews or, for that matter, interviews.

“I’m probably not going to read what you write,” he told this reporter. “The minute everyone says my work is fantastic, I start to feel paranoid. Occasionally, I find there’s something to learn from a negative review, but for the most part, I’m not really interested in reading a description of how my dancers throw the bricks. I know how they throw the bricks.”

Speaking by phone from his studio in Brussels, Vandekeybus was cordial and accommodating yet sometimes enigmatic and tangential in response to questions. He was also tired, having just dealt with 500 dancers who showed up at one of several auditions for his 2009 performance season.

“Talent and personality are very important, but I also look for people who can hide their technique,” he said. “People using their intuition are very interesting to me. Dance can be very boring when the dancers are far from intuition.”

In the Vandekeybus universe, intuition also happens to be a Darwinian necessity. In “Spiegel,” for example, a dancer performing in the excerpt from the choreographer’s earliest work, “What the Body Does Not Remember,” has to throw and catch bricks at just the right second to avoid serious injury. In another sequence, when several dancers stomp aggressively, others, initially prone on the floor, must roll away from stampeding legs in the nick of time.

From the beginning, “my language was much more based on instinct and a kind of survival than formal dance,” said Vandekeybus, who seemed to enjoy pointing out his lack of formal training. “It’s a very physical language, connected not just to the form of dance but to theater and film.”

HE SAID that for “Spiegel,” he selected and edited excerpts that would best illustrate the evolution of his movement language, which grew more theatrical over the years and began to be supplemented by texts and film.

“I chose the material that remains very interesting and won’t get old,” he said. “So while it’s not a ‘greatest hits,’ I think it’s a good performance.”

One of six children of a veterinarian in a farming community, Vandekeybus grew up watching his father castrate cats and deal with such medical emergencies as a cow getting run over by a tractor. Waking up in the middle of the night to help his father deliver baby pigs was par for the course, “because I had smaller hands, so it was easier for me to pull the pigs out one by one.”

It’s these childhood experiences that he cited frequently as formative influences and that led to a lifelong fascination “with how the human being can imitate the animal. It’s always interesting when you transfer energy from one kind of creature to another. Like when a man imitates a woman or a child imitates his father. Or in cartoons, when it’s the animals who act like humans.”

After secondary school, he enrolled in the Catholic University of Leuven near Brussels to study psychology but found himself gravitating toward theater, film and photography. So in 1985, he auditioned for the experimental theater director Jan Fabre and wound up touring with Fabre’s company before decamping to Madrid with a group of young dancers to create his own work. “What the Body Does Not Remember” premiered in 1987 and won a Bessie Award in New York the following year.

Vandekeybus has been internationally prominent since, with one reason being his zest for seeking out dancers from every continent -- and not always by conventional auditions. Some have gone on to successful careers as choreographers themselves, including Damien Jalet, whom he spotted dancing in a club at age 21 and invited to work with his company.

“I immediately related to the speed and incredible physicality of the work, and I see Ultima Vez like a family I’m always linked to,” says Jalet, now a prominent French-Belgian choreographer. “My first and main dance reference has been the language of Ultima Vez, and there are things that Wim told me at the time that I only now realize had a great impact on the artistic choices I’ve made.”

Similarly, Australian choreographer Gavin Webber felt an immediate connection to Vandekeybus when he traveled to Belgium at the advice of a friend from New Zealand to audition for Ultima Vez. As a performer with the company, “I was inspired by the instinctive nature of Wim’s work and his courage to follow an idea without worrying about how it might be viewed,” he says.

NOW the artistic director of Dancenorth, one of Australia’s leading contemporary dance companies, Webber adds: “Wim is a constant reference point for me. I think there are some very clear influences in the work I do, and it’s because I understand the spirit of his work. More than anything, it is about the energy.”

Vandekeybus conceded that he has “influenced many people, but the people I admire the most are those that kill their father. Art has to be destructive. You build something, you get something out of what you build, but then you have to destroy it.”

Although he has no intention of slowing down as a choreographer, he said he is working on a screenplay for a feature film about an orphaned 8-year-old that he plans to shoot in Chile in 2010. “This has nothing to do with dance,” he said. “Who knows, maybe I’ll make a different kind of work for the next 20 years.”

Whatever Vandekeybus does, it’s highly probable he will adhere to the core beliefs that have accompanied him throughout his career.

“Every crisis is a chance for something new,” he said. “This has always been in me -- to go to a place that is uncertain.”

--

Ultima Vez

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA

When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Price: $22 to $42

Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org