Startup seconds: Guillaume Guilherme

Guillaume Guilherme, interviewed by Karina Buckley

Guillaume Guilherme’s project No Honeymoon brings Sigrid Stigsdatter Mathiassen’s Cold Hawaii to Guilherme’s native Switzerland this spring.

The programme, which will shortly tour three Swiss cities, was conceived as a triple bill with Mathiassen’s movement meditation on heartbreak to be followed by dance artist, poet and DJ, Malika Fankha’s verbal variations on the same theme. A rehearsed improvisation by a local dancer from the host city will round out the evening, soundtracked by Mathiassen’s rehearsal playlist and set against the a visual backdrop of ‘heartbreak’ writ large.

Since last we spoke, Guilherme’s preparations have been largely logistical, liaising with host venues Tanzhaus Zürich and Théâtre Sévelin 36 in Lausanne, and organising contracts and accommodation for Mathiassen from Südpol in Luzern, the theatre he now co-directs and where the No Honeymoon tour will conclude. One of his key ambitions for the project was to make it sustainable, integrating Mathiassen into her host environment by building workshops and networking opportunities into her schedule, and having her slow-travel from her base in Denmark to Switzerland for the tour. Unfortunately, his best laid plans have been thwarted by circumstance.

“Sigrid will not be in Copenhagen – she will be coming from Mexico, where she’s touring for Alex Baczyński-Jenkins – so in one way there is already travel that is not part of the project. And it’s a long journey that necessitates air travel, which is what I wanted to avoid”, says Guilherme. “The second problem is that, due to her education commitments, she cannot extend her stay in Switzerland long enough to accommodate the residency that was planned for Südpol, so that last residency won’t happen.

“The third complication is that she needs to go back not to Copenhagen but to Oslo which is much further away, so now we have to consider how we can ask Sigrid to travel there quickly without travelling by plane? We are investigating if there is a possibility of travelling first class by train to the north of Europe but we have to consider the comfort, the price, the time used to travel… so that is the discussion here.”

Guilherme’s sustainable travel plans for the tour may have been derailed but his creative ambitions remain on track. The text for his programme’s second act was still a work in progress when we spoke at Christmas but the collaboration between dancer, producer and poet had been a rich and fruitful one. Speaking about their experience of the process, Fankha said: “I feel I have a lot of freedom. I want to create something that doesn’t feel like a commissioned text where someone gives me the scaffolding and I just fill in the colours. At the same time I really want to be aware not only of Sigrid’s work but also of this very special way that Guillaume curates – this idea of putting artists and genres together in a way that is already super poetic.”

On researching their text, Fankha said: “My main question to Sigrid was about expanding the idea of heartbreak – not limiting it to intimate relationships or one-to-one relations but to work with it on a broader scale. I’m also talking about the political situation going on in the world in many ways, but I’m specifically referring to the ongoing wars – multiple wars – and the idea that heartbreak is something happening to us several times a day. This repetition of hurt and rupture, fracture – that’s kind of my starting point. Also, expanding the idea of intimacy: not limiting intimacy to partners or so-called partners, but really expanding it to the actual surroundings; not just to people but also situations.”

The text – Dry Ice – will be intoned by a pre-recorded voice to an empty stage, and the production will play on all the possibilities the title offers. “The curatorial aspect of this triple bill was to have Sigrid’s piece, Cold Hawaii, and then a kind of “in between” with no one on stage, so it’s more about voices, ghosts, smoke, light changes… It’s like having a space inhabited without a body. It’s like manifesting the absence”, says Guilherme.

Fankha adds: “It’s really interesting to have the voice as something between a physical and a non-physical presence. It’s not just bodiless written words: there is a body attached somehow. Because without the body there’s no voice, but still the absence of the body means it slips between the physical and the non-physical.”

The programme’s conclusion returns to the physical realm, with a rehearsed improvisation on the theme of heartbreak by a local dancer. While Clara Delorme had been engaged to fulfil that role in Lausanne, Guilherme had yet to source an artist to perform in Lucerne when we spoke. “I will be happy to have someone non-binary or identifying as female because it will be in the frame of International Women’s Day”, he says. (Sandra Albrecht and Irina Lorez have since accepted Guilherme’s invitation to take part in the Lucerne performances.) He sees the final act of the programme as bringing “as we say in French, punctuation. It’s a mix of making a full stop – ending something – and at the same time giving rhythm to an evening. And I really don’t want to give up on the idea that when people are leaving, they receive a small tissue as a joke!”

Although Guilherme has encountered logistical hiccups, he has managed to turn many negatives into positives. When Tanzhaus Zürich agreed to host Mathiassen it was to be the first date of her Swiss tour but their Swiss Dance Days programme meant that a performance of No Honeymoon could not be accommodated. Rather than pass up the opportunity, Guilherme organised a two-week residency for Mathiassen in Tanzhaus, including showing an extract of her research half way through. Separately, Fankha intends to use the Südpol residency that Mathiassen cannot avail of at the end of the tour.

Guilherme’s plans to slow travel No Honeymoon may have hit a roadblock but his plans for sustainable touring have only accelerated. He says “For me, as a new curator in the scene, I’m trying to imagine how we could be radical in the future in the sense of refusing projects, slowing down projects, refusing to fly, slowing down tempos and not travelling too much. It’s a question of sobriety – to be sober but not boring. To be radically sober doesn’t mean you don’t like to party or don’t make connections. It might sound a bit religious but actually I think that’s the Zeitgeist!”

Guilherme would have liked No Honeymoon to tour to more than the three venues he secured, however, and feels that a tool like recently launched Cooprog would have helped in this regard. The platform facilitates greater coordination between the schedules of venues and artists, opening up possibilities for more sustainable touring. Nonetheless, he is happy that the tour is happening, and with the energy it’s creating:

“I have the sense that Sigrid’s time is super-used, I’m super-happy because there are so many aspects to this project. It’s packed, and it’s bringing people together, creating intense connections over three weeks.”

These connections are what Fankha feels have held the project together, despite its long gestation (the tour was originally planned for 2023 but due to programming schedules already in place at the host venues, it had to be postponed until spring 2024). They say:

“This project couldn’t happen when it was supposed to happen. A year later, it’s so challenging not to give up or not to be seduced by the loss of momentum. But I think Guillaume has a very inspiring way of recreating the momentum for us, to recreate that connection.”

For this focus on connection, Guilherme credits Aerowaves founder, the late John Ashford, who had recently passed when we spoke. He says, “I have this sense that, as long as you work with passion for theatre, dance, you get connected, and connection lasts. John mentioned some stuff as an experienced man that I couldn’t forget, especially this aspect of building relationships in time and space. When you work on a European level you will meet people maybe once a year or once every two years but over fifteen or twenty years, it’s like building up families. And I like to be close. And faithful.”