Sylvie Guillem on why she’s still ‘Mademoiselle Non’

Sylive Guillem will be in Venice tomor­row to receive from the Bien­nale  the Leone d’oro  (Golden Lion) for “hav­ing redesigned the form of the dan­cer, defy­ing the laws of physics”.

Valeria Crippa  of the Cor­ri­ere della Sera talked to her about aspects of her career.

I could have ended up like a cork bob­bing along on the water at the whim of the cur­rents. Instead I pre­ferred to take the helm and steer my life into the open sea and its storms.

When Nureyev nom­in­ated me étoile at the Paris Opera when I was 19 it would have been, for many dan­cers, the max­imum aspir­a­tion, but not for me. It was only the begin­ning of a dream that I’m still liv­ing through.

I will con­tinue to dance as long as it gives me sat­is­fac­tion, then I’ll move on to some­thing else. I’ll devote myself to envir­on­mental groups or open a dogs’ home. Who knows!

Her sobri­quet ‘Mademois­elle Non’, which the Brit­ish press quickly gave her on learn­ing of her infam­ous tem­pera­ment, was inspired by ‘Mon­sieur Non’ himself:

Nureyev was intransigent and I learnt a lot from him. Too much secur­ity and com­fort is the death of art, it’s bet­ter to stay con­stantly on the pre­cip­ice. The most fer­tile peri­ods of cre­ativ­ity are in times of crisis. To be at its best, dance must have a high level of neces­sity, of severity.

Today I see theatres in the hands of bur­eau­crats, like in the film Brazil: La Scala, for example. I said pub­licly the last time I was in Milan for Manon in 2011, that I would return, but on cer­tain con­di­tions… I’ve heard noth­ing fur­ther from them. For­tu­nately, Italy is an incred­ible coun­try, it seems that everything is going badly then, mira­cu­lously, things seem to turn around. I love it also for this.

After read­ing that, La Scala’s Artistic Dir­ector Stéphane Liss­ner is surely draw­ing up a con­tract right now! Guillem doesn’t worry; after hav­ing largely left the clas­sical rep­er­tory her mod­ern cho­reo­graphic ven­tures have largely been largely over­seen by Sadler’s Wells Theatre in her old home, Lon­don (she is now based in Switzer­land).

I leave the organ­isa­tion to Sadler’s Wells in Lon­don. But I don’t think about mar­ket­ing, and I don’t dance to be recog­nised in the street: dance alone must be enough.

While open­ing a dogs’ home may never hap­pen, she is already involved in vari­ous causes.

I’ve given my back­ing to Sea Shep­herd, a mar­ine wild­life con­ser­va­tion organ­iz­a­tion, to fight against whale hunt­ing. Non-profit organ­isa­tions today fill the role that polit­ics has turned its back on. Even if it is a Uto­pia from Don Quix­ote I like to devote my time to them, with the same com­mit­ment that I have for my dance.

Photo: Sylvie Guillem as Manon at Teatro alla Scala in 2011, by Gra­ham Spicer

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