hong kong tatler. august 2019 33Close-Up / CONCIERGEMultidisciplinary,charismatic
andchallenging,French
choreographerChristianRizzois theposterboy for21st-century
dance,makingwaves withhisexperimentalperformances
BYANNIEDARLINGPHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAELA GILES
Christian Rizzo is a nonconformist. Grizzled and low-
key in an oversized, distressed denim jacket worn with
cropped trackies and tennis socks, the charismatic French
choreographer has a distinct style that complements his
eccentric personality. Born in Cannes in 1965, his formative
years were spent surrounded by the countercultural and
revolutionary changes of the 1970s. It was a time defined
by a need for realism and escapism. Pie-in-the-sky thinking
was laughed off as the utopian values of the Swinging
Sixties fell by the wayside. Everything was punk and glitter,
grit and glamour, and Rizzo was embracing the fantasy of
individualism through dance even back then.
“They were fun and high-spirited decades that were full
of energy,” he recalls, and music—music to which Rizzo
spent his adolescence dancing in sticky-floored nightclubs.
The genres didn’t matter, he says, and varied from rock and
soul to disco and electro. His cousin was a ballerina, but he
had never wanted to perform professionally—an unusual
trait for a choreographer, but there’s not much that’s
conventional about Rizzo.
His transition to choreography wasn’t straightforward.
Rizzo’s professional life began in Toulouse, where he started
a rock band and established his own clothing line. He
later moved to Nice to study at Villa Arson, a prestigious
research institution for contemporary art where he cut
his teeth as a choreographer. By 1996 he was presenting
regular performances, installations and dance pieces, andhas since brought more than 40 different productions
to fruition around the world. He has also taught art and
contemporary dance in numerous schools, and in 2015 was
appointed director of the International Choreographic
Institute in Montpellier, where he is now based.
“When I started out, I didn’t have a lot of technical
knowledge about dance,” he admits, and to this day he
finds it “very strange” that people pay to watch his work.
“When I presented my first piece, people asked, ‘What?’”—
he slips into a pretentious, artsy voice—“‘What is this?
This isn’t dance!’” That debut performance more than two
decades ago starred unworn dresses given life through light
and sound effects. “Sometimes I feel like I have to fight for
the dance world to become more forward-thinking.”
Our conversation is taking place at Freespace, West
Kowloon’s newly opened centre for contemporary
performance, shortly before it stages the Hong Kong debut
of From A True Story, a 75-minute all-male folk dance Rizzo
created in 2013 inspired by emotions stirred by a dance
he experienced in Istanbul. “It’s been a dream of mine
to perform in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is bursting with
movement,” he says of the city he first visited 20 years ago,
pausing to admire the harbour from Freespace’s floor-to-
ceiling windows. “There are the sounds of helicopters and
boats, multiple languages and traffic.”
These are some of the elements that get Rizzo’s creative
juices flowing. “What inspires my projects comes from
external influences rather than something that’s within
me,” he says, which brings him to the French jewellery and
watch maison sponsoring his Hong Kong performance.
“Van Cleef & Arpels represents tradition but also vision,
and this is what I try to accomplish through dance. It’s
about being aware of what we call the present while paying
tribute to the past and striving for the future.”
In From A True Story, which was staged as part of the
Le French May Arts Festival, eight dancers and two live
drummers blend folkloric gestures with contemporary
movement. “Nobody could believe that I wanted to
organise a piece with only male dancers,” Rizzo recalls.
“Nobody liked the idea.” Challenging gender stereotypes
is just another example of how the choreographer goes
against the norm. However, you’d be mistaken, he tells me,
if you assume he’s not interested in preserving tradition.
“Few people understand dance’s history and, as a result, it’s
disappearing. As choreographers and performers, we are a
living archive of this history.”OUT OF STEP