This was your first time choreographing with the dancers in your role as Artistic Director. How did you approach the process?

I think what’s beautiful about the choreographic process is that every process is completely different. For me, I always start with an idea, with a way of being and of working, and then that shifts and changes depending on who I’m working with.

This was our first collaboration, so in a way it was a first creative meeting. That made the process quite special for me, because it set the tone for our artistic collaboration. Naturally, dancers who work with a range of different choreographers carry a lot of different information in their bodies. That information meets what I bring into the room, and something new is created. BORDER is unique within my repertoire. It’s very specific to this location, and it sets the foundation of my artistic work here in Malta. It’s the beginning of that.

BORDER is the first part of a diptych: BORDER/NATION. What are the ideas behind these two works, and why make them now?  

BORDER/NATION, a two part project,  grew out of a feeling, an observation of how things feel globally right now. In recent years, it felt like we had made a lot of progress. Big issues were coming to the forefront and being taken seriously. It felt like things could change. But now it feels like we’ve hit a moment where things are rolling backwards, or where there’s the potential for that to happen. There’s a fear of the future, a fear of change.

That got me thinking about change, how we respond to it in the world and in our personal lives. It also got me thinking about grief: how we relate to the death of people, of things, of things that are important to us. Grief is often shaped by nostalgia, by memory, by what we loved and treasured. It makes us look back. I started thinking about my own relationship to grief, and how that mirrors what’s happening in society. In moments of change, are we grieving what was, and therefore looking backwards for answers in the past?

For me, the future feels so uncertain, and the changes we’re facing are so profound, that the answers are probably not in the past. The past shaped the present. The answers might be in the future, in looking beyond where we are and where we’ve been. BORDER/NATION abstracts those ideas and feelings. It places them into movement, and into imagery that, for me, evokes and speaks to those themes.

Collaboration is central to your practice. Who did you work with on BORDER beyond the dancers?

I love collaborating, and that always starts with the dancers. But beyond that, I like to bring in a range of different artists. It’s about bringing something unknown into the space, something that can shift and change my process, help me learn something new, and bring something exciting and different to the final work for an audience.

For BORDER, we worked with local artists. Holly Knowles designed the costumes, beautifully tailored costumes. We also worked with John Banthorp, who works a lot in film. For the first iteration of the work, he developed a rope sculpture that we installed at the Chamber of Commerce in Valletta. That sculpture won’t be on stage at ŻfinDays, but he also contributed to the development of the flag used in the work. The rope and the concept behind it still really live on in the dancers’ physicality. It’s very important to the language of the work.

We also worked closely with Dali, our Technical Manager, who will be lighting the production for ŻfinDays, who has some very specific and exciting ideas about how we can create barriers in space using light.

Mario Manara and Simon Riccardi-Zani in rehearsal for BORDER | Photograph by Elisa Von Brockdorff

What was your experience of working with the artists of ŻfinMalta in the studio?

The thing about our dancers at ŻfinMalta is that they’re so much fun. As a choreographer, part of my job is to notice what’s present, notice who’s present, and then unleash them, to see what’s possible when they just… go. There are so many moments in the process where something surprises you, where you laugh, or you notice something happening in the corner that you never imagined. Then you can pull it in. For me, the joy of this process was that it was really formed by all of us in the moment, by being present and conscious of what’s possible if you let it happen.

The work itself is very structured and very formed, but within that there has to be life, breath, and personality. That’s what makes the work special. It can hold form, specificity, and structure, while also holding personality. That’s part of my mission here with the company: that the dancers are at the centre of our organisation, our thinking, our practice, and how we meet an audience.

This February…

This February, ŻfinMalta presents three works at ŻfinDays, a vibrant showcase of the breadth of the company’s repertoire, featuring creations by three outstanding European choreographers. Matthew William Robinson’s BORDER is presented in the first week of ŻfinDays, as part of a dynamic double bill alongside NÁCAR, a new work by award-winning choreographer Paloma Muñoz.

Join us at ŻfinDays on 20, 21, 22, 27 and 28 February, and 1 March, and experience Matthew William Robinson’s striking BORDER ahead of the premiere of its counterpart work, NATION, in May at the Manoel Theatre.