Hi Paul, thank you very much for having me here. Very pleased to have this conversation with you.

Dead or alive. Name three people that you would like to meet?

The first one would probably be Luis Armstrong, and I would take away his boot which he stepped for the first time on the moon. So that would probably be the first person I would like to meet.
I would have liked to meet Sean Connery, but he’s not there anymore.
I could go on his grave and pray, but I don’t do that. I don’t know a third person, probably Angela Merkel, because I live in Germany, so I suppose I’m very involved in all this.

If you could be an expert on anything you can choose, you wake up tomorrow, and suddenly you are an expert in that field… what would that be?

I think it would be an astronaut. As a child, I always dreamed of flying around the sky. I was building dragons, you know, with threats. They flew a hundred meters away from me in the sky, so I was always fascinated about the universe, and as a child, I said to my mom: “I’m going to be an astronaut.” She said… no no no no no no no you stay here. And then something happened between five and seven years, and I changed my mind. So, I wanted then to be a dancer!

Very well, you make people fly now; it’s fine.

I suppose, yeah, with their fantasy, I hope anyway.
But, I mean, as a communicator for the arts, I suppose that I do this. I talk to the public, and I try to transmit emotions through my dancers, of course, through the work and through the whole set up, the stage set up, lights, what concerns the technical environment.
So, it’s working like hand in hand together; otherwise, it would not be possible to do all of this.

Interesting, very, very accurate! That is also one reason why we are building this community. It is to raise awareness within the entertainment industry.
I’ve been a stage technician for the last 21 years, and it got…I don’t know; we drifted apart. But, you see, it was just the technicians doing their thing, the dancers doing their thing, you know they didn’t know anymore what other people were doing.

Sometimes it might happen that you’re so concentrated and focused on your channel that you forget what’s behind you. Of course, there is staff supporting you anytime. Still, usually, when you are an artist, and you must go on stage and present your work, you’re very worried about your person. You live like in a crystal ball, as long as you dance actively on stage because it takes 200 percent of your energy…. during the whole day starting with class, rehearsals and going in the evening on stage, four-five times a week.
We take for granted that the technicians are there. But I never did it because I always thought as a choreographer, already at an early age, that all my dreams would not be possible to realize on stage without those people. So, people need fantasy, but they are the reality that must run to make people understand that this fantasy world comes from hard work and getting together, from cooperating with each other.

This is the real secret of chemicals and wants to bring a product on stage because, in the end, we talk about a product. This is art, but it’s a product that people see on the media and social networks, so we’re always kind of putting it in a box. Okay, this is this kind of work now, but if you go behind there, it is not only the dancers and the choreographer, but there is an entire world that should be explained.

My point exactly. Glad that we have you onboard to bring up some cases.
Back in your dancing days when you started out or worked in all these big houses…. 

Did you have something like a ritual before the curtain opens, that very moment?

Well, the adrenaline that runs through your body is just amazing because you don’t feel much anymore, just pure energy. You don’t even feel the body because the adrenaline is the “Lampenfieber” you say in Germany for stage fright.
This is basically before the curtains go up.
This feeling must be there. When it’s not happening, then something is wrong, and you must find another way to bring it up on stage. For one and a half hours, how you’re going to entertain the public if you don’t believe in what you’re doing.
I was a Leprechaun then I became Aleppo home or I did so many other roles from very important choreographers, then I changed, and there was a metamorphose every time.
This is about the choreographers trying to take out the best of human material, to say it sounds raspy. I have a target when I go on stage, and my target is to communicate with the audience.

Wonderful! We did a little background search on your career. It’s always too obvious to pick the first one, but we took the second one, and we stumbled upon the 1999 frames from the ballet in Istanbul. What was that show about?

That was an insider concept about the reality in this part of the world—trying to reflect on our European society. I found out that it was very different, the way people behave, the way they start their day, they have other traditions.
I was in Turkey twice, the first time I was on holiday, the second time with the Peter Schaufuss Ballet from Denmark. I was called as a choreographer there. They invited me to live in Istanbul for ten days to see what was happening. For me, “Frame” was about how women were put in a box. It was an unhappy situation to see how women were treated.
I won’t probably say too much about it because I would get too political. And if you start to rebel… you know that moment was powerful, 1999, to say that out. I tried to get inspired by the way of life that they’re running down there. That was a very spontaneous, very oriental exotic, that was something that I didn’t know, and it fascinated me.
We still have problems with saying that out sometimes.

This is a very different direction if we start to talk about this because, sure, there is a lot to say.
We don’t even have to turn around and say that we are not having a pandemic here because we do, and through all this, we start to live again, we start to try to put the puzzle that we got lost in the last two years.
It is difficult, not impossible, but it’s really difficult to grab all these puzzles together and show this picture again the way it was. It is missing something there, and that’s where we must work on it right now, try to go through what we’ve got offered.
There is not much choice sometimes, but you can always talk it out.
Sometimes you don’t need to dance to talk it out. You need to talk.
Sometimes it’s that easy, and you say that it’s something that it’s not going well actually, especially with our branch, what is concerning theater and what is concerning freelance company and even freelance choreographers because we have got chopped out. So I spent just one more word about this.
I mean, the offer for me were many. I had several offers throughout Europe to create as director because I put an Opera on stage, like what I did in Palermo, in Catania. Then I did it in Dresden at the Semper Opera, so, for me, it was important to have platforms that are connected through bridges.
That’s the way it works in our branch. All this was just gone in a short time, and nobody realized what was happening.
We kept going, and now after such a long time, we are tired of going with the people, especially if you did certain things before what they told you to do, so you should be able to start your life not the way it was because it will never be.
It is a big change, but we have to go through this!
There is no other way than trying to make the best out of it. There is so much to talk about that sometimes we get lost in a big universe because we don’t know where we have to start anymore. The current situation that we’re going through, a fourth pandemic, well let’s see what’s happening.

Tell us about your transition from a dancer to a choreographer. I am asking this because maybe there are other dancers out there who want to do the transition, and maybe there can be a first-hand experience.

Well, every transition is personal. It’s individual. It cannot be that a choreographer has the same pattern as another one, at least if you’re in the same house and you got given the same chances to create for a big stage. So I think that you must be a born choreographer. I remember myself dancing on the beach or in my grandmother’s house, putting all the furniture away, already; at the age of seven, I was inventing steps.

When I started to go to ballet school, the first year was like; I could not say I was going to ballet school. It’s a little bit like, you know, one of the stories that the parents don’t want you to go to the ballet school. It’s not going to be good for you.
My neighbor just took me with their daughter to this ballet school, and they gave me basically everything. They gave me ballet shoes they gave me the clothes and a bag. My mom didn’t know, and my dad didn’t know.

So, I did this for a couple of months. Always saying that I was doing my homework at the neighbor, but she was taking me to the ballet school.
When my parents found it out, in the end, it was a disaster because, of course, they grounded me for two months.
I couldn’t go anywhere, and somebody threw my ballet stuff in the trash, and they were like, forget it.
Then you know this ballet director came to our house and then tried to convince my mom that it would be a shame if I would not dance because I had a talent for it. Then they started slowly but surely but with a very hard start.

Was it hard for you to follow other choreographies when you already had your own vision of movements at such an early stage?

Yeah, that’s a little bit like fighting a monster where you know, it wakes up every day and tells you maybe you can or not. You have to find your own way. You have to go through these stages, and you have to suffer as well.

It is really important that you go through these emotional stages. At least, this way worked for me. It’s always a fight, and then you’re kind of there, but then you’re totally down after a minute, and then you think you’re not going to manage, but you always manage in the end because all these components are there because you know being prudent it’s like the anti-camera from you.
From being patient, you learn through all of this. It is kind of like taking your time in the studio alone and then trying to reach run, new dancing vocabularies. It might look the weirdest now on myself but you have to transmit to your dancers and give them an idea why they are doing this.

It’s not only about to do this in that way. It’s not gymnastics. There’s a story behind it.

Other choreographers influenced me a lot. I mean, I took a lot from them as well. That’s what I’m today. It’s probably because I had the chance and the privilege to work with them because I worked in big houses where they just got invited, and we could do all these beautiful works, and then you learn a lot.

Being punished sometimes and you punish yourself as well for not having done this at the right time or the right place. It’s like a fairy where you have to catch the veil. Yeah, you have to catch it.
In the way of, it looks like you get it and if you don’t catch it then this moment is gone. And you have to be there, you don’t know what is happening but then it’s happening. You can only hope that the veil is really long. It might not be long enough, and you’ve got to have very fast legs .

In this short amount of time that you’re a dancer, you know, it’s a limited time because you can go until 40, maybe 42, but then the body or your bones starts to hurt because this is a very extreme turnout. This is not a natural way of being. We have to turn everything out. We’re born closed, and we have to open.
Everything is like giving pressure to your articulations. To say at a certain age, okay, that was it, and now we concentrate on choreography, but we don’t go on stage.

My last performance was in 2018 with the company. I don’t say my age, but I was not young anymore.

How long does it take from the initial thought of a choreography or a certain type of movement to process that and bring it on stage through someone else’s body?

You process with the dancers.
I realized that I know that I have to do a block of 10 minutes today because time is running and the hell is burning behind you. That’s the way it is. I work very well under pressure.
I can go thru 10 minutes of choreography per day, which is a lot of material. But if I’m under pressure, my dancers they’re there with me, and then we do it together. Because I dance with them all day. I don’t sit on a chair, but I show them what it’s supposed to be. Three Four hundred times if it’s needed. But they don’t need that much, maybe once or twice, and then they got it already. So, you process with them.

Talking about your dancers, how do you pick them?

They must have skills, that’s for sure. I’m not picking the dancers just because of their energy. But it is a mix of stage experience and a mix of energy that comes from them. The background is very important.
I pick my dancers because they all have a classical background, but then I twist and break them in the studio.
But you can see that the classical education helps a lot to go through the whole situation which is about contemporary, classical, modern or theatrical dance.
Those are all things that you have to experience around having a classical ballet education, and all my dancers they come from big institutions of ballet. And then, out of a sudden, they want to try new ways of experiences, new stuff. Because with ballet, it’s a not immensely expanded fantasy, you have kind of the repertoire, so it’s tutu and pointe shoes.
Then there comes the choreographer that maybe might be very interesting for you at the moment, and you try new ways, and you try to explore more. This is the way.

I saw a clip of the dance movie Chronos where we saw an installation where it was raining salt, and it had an excellent um scenography. So my question here is, if you had no budget issues at all, what technicality would you implement in your shows?

Well, most of the time, when I don’t have money to put the setup on stage, I use nature. I go into nature, and I let myself help from it. And then I did a lot of nature filming sessions that were then reproduced on stage through a screen, like in my Mondo Paradiso, for example.

That was a production I did in 2019 with the company.
The video is always helping a lot to put yourself in another fantasy parallel with what is happening on stage. I don’t know if I have answered to your question right?

So you would go for projections then. Maybe some holographic content?

I would use nature for sure. Maybe a rotten room in the back that’s like a junkard. Or in a backyard for example, with a wall where a message is written, “you’re here right now and this is happening to you.”
You want to give a message.
It’s all about trying to exchange, as we are doing now. You are asking a question, and I answer these questions the way I can do, and you take what you need of it.

I was lucky enough to see some of your pieces. As an outstanding, I mean, I have been a stage technician, and my girlfriend is a dancer, yet I am not too involved in the dance field.
But what I found amazing in your pieces, also through the language of the dancers, is that all the movements were so much more fluent than in other pieces. You know, it always felt like there were no edges at all. Is that something that you are instructing on purpose, or is there a deeper meaning behind it?

You mean probably Mondo Paradiso. That was even for me, like going through stages because we were talking about plastic on earth, islands of plastic in the ocean, and about the pollution, we’re going through right now.
It was 2019, and I think we were probably one of the first productions in Germany that were talking about this concept, and where we’re going to go if we keep producing so much plastic and keep burning so much fossil and if we don’t change into an electric world that doesn’t create pollution in co2.

I said, okay, I’m not going to express all of this through dance. So, in the end, it came spontaneously, trying not to put me in a box, not to think what people would love to see, but what I would love to express through every piece. That was a very different entourage.
New movements or like my dancers, inspired me that much in a way that I was always going through all the day through different stages and enjoying them. Or sometimes not.
Sometimes you also have to learn to let go because you create so much, and then there was the most challenging part for me to say, okay guys, I’m sorry, but this it’s not happening anymore. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

I need to have a red thread that brings me through the whole piece, so if I want to communicate, I have to go that way, and that’s what worked so well with them because they understood from the beginning. And they just let themselves go through this.

And talking about the movement, that came to me as a surprise. Every time I create, my movements can be kind of sloppy, dirty, very clear and clean, or reflect a bit of the ballet world because this is where I come from.
People have to be very open for anything, there are even naked scenes on stage which probably provoke sometimes the audience, but this is exactly what we’re talking about. Its like putting on a mask or dressing up, this is like you know, I dont use to dress for nobody anymore, and that is the basic philosophy then being together in a studio with people and creating such a work
I’m not refining anything. That’s the way it’s going to be presented, and it works because you feel that you have to do this now, and you don’t care if people like it or not. You just do it.

Was there a time when you wanted to give up?

A time when you lost your passion and you thought, why am I doing this.

Well, I had some dark days, definitely many dark days, but then I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, which sometimes was unreachable, or it took very long to get there. I was not just dancing and choreographing during my days. I was finishing the university. I have a certificate as a translator and speak seven languages, that’s why we’re talking English now and not Italian.
I had an important job working in logistics for the textile industry, which I studied very hard for. Nevertheless, the theater called me back again, and I had many offers from big houses. One of those was the Semper Opera in Dresden. I have worked already four times in four years there, so I’ve been called every year to go back.

Then I said, I think that that was a pleasant experience. I didn’t need it anymore. Then I choose what made me very happy again because sometimes we have to go through life and we have to do things that we don’t like to do, but you know we always hope that it’s coming, a time that you can do what you love, and you can make from this your work and you know if you transform your passion in your work is the best thing can happen.

What I’m hearing from this now is when you have a dark moment, or you feel like the passion is gone, take a step back, do something else, and then it might come back naturally?

That’s what happened. I mean, the passion was always there. The point is that I decided then to take a different way, a different direction. Because I know my life, just you know I made a living off it. I have lived from art and this since I started as a child. I didn’t know any other job that was just theater.
The theatre was my house, and I lived there, and I loved it.

Then things changed, and then you have to kind of adapt with yourself, as well, to the situation. And after living in many parts of the world then you decide that you have to settle somewhere and you have to settle your work, and you don’t pick the city, but you come spontaneously. I lived in Frankfurt for many years, and then I was in Wiesbaden, and now I’m in Munich since2014.

It’s been now seven years that I lived in a new town. You have to start every time from zero and build puzzles around you. Every time you leave a place, you know you take something with you to make it somewhere else. So yeah, the experience is what tells you.

That’s how we grow as persons and as artists, especially.Who were the three most influential persons in your life?

Well, that’s a question. Let’s say as a child, definitely my mom because she’s an amazing character.

Even when she forbid the first dancing career?

Yes, but I think she wanted to try out if I was ready to go for this, which is why she put me on hard proof. To say, okay, you want this? She just wanted to find it out if it was really my passion, and then by the end, she had to realize that it was

Then my dad. My dad is an amazing person. He’s the quiet and the most wisdomous guy. I think what I am today comes a lot from him.
As well as just being kind. With your feet on the ground but trying to dream as well.

A third person was my mentor, the guy that brought me up on the stage. He was a Bulgarian teacher called Ivan Sanov. He’s not alive anymore. Unfortunately he died with leukemia or melanoma at a very young age.
He was about 48.
He was the one taking me everywhere to perform and to every competition until I was 18. Then I left definitely Italy to go to Argentina and then going back to England and then going all around the pond.

Regarding nutrition in the dance world. We hear too often some disturbing stories.What is a positive relationship with food and body issues?

Okay, when I cross my leg, I have to think about it seriously.
Well, it’s not a legend that dancers have a very strange relationship with the food, it is true, but it’s not with everyone. It depends on the metabolic and on how you’re supposed to eat when you’re a child, education is very important.

I also work for important academies where I sometimes have kids, and I see that nutrition must be very important for them because they’re growing and their bones and everything.
So it’s the same with the grown-ups and professional dancers. They have to give their body what they take of it during rehearsal. Being ready and concentrated because this is a 100 percent brain job. Some of them don’t eat enough, and this is the problem because they think that know jumping a rupeur would probably be a good idea, but it’s not if you work on such a high level. Some of them have no education, that’s why they think that they can just not eat, or they think that just having water with a piece of bread, oh right- no carbs, just a few vegetables a day would be enough.

It’s not enough, guys. It’s not enough. I experienced myself being worried about going to dancers in other companies and asking them, what’s your nutrition?
Because you seem to be very thin and extremely skinny. From where do you get your power? I was very interested, not in an invasive way, just asking, what’s your menu? I tell you mine. I love Italian food. I cook lasagna canelone piani I do pollo, everything. What would you eat?
And then she starts to tell me, a few nuts a day with a fig, and then we begin to have a problem.

That’s why I think nutrition is very important in a career and as a child when you start dancing. You must know what you can eat, and you can even have bread. Maybe not every day one kilo but you can have a slice of bread if you work so hard. And giving vitamins to your body is very important. But don’t jump your lunch, don’t jump your dinner, take breakfast, you need it.

I did my career this way. Sometimes I was one pound more, sometimes one less. What the heck. Holy Moly. I mean, that’s the way we are.
If you don’t fit into your costume, you have to open up a bit more.

Excellent advice there. Which show gave you the most significant impression after all these years?

Oh, that’s hard to answer. Because I usually go very often and see other performances and other productions. But I think there was a concert in Vienna by Max Richter. He presented the four seasons from Vivaldi all rearranged. That was, for me, the most significant show I saw in the last years. That was very impressive.

That was one of my projects with the company to present four-season from Vivaldi in this arrangement, but you know then we had to stop all of a sudden. But this would be a project for the future.

I want to talk about the economic structure of a new piece as we are here now with a creator. Where does the money go first?

Okay, first of all, you need to have the money for the dancers.
Dancers come first, and it must be a good remuneration because what i really ask sometimes is impossible, then my dancers they have to be well paid at least.
When I can, I give even more if it’s possible, for their work, for their energy, their talent because this is not given for granted. Secondly, for the technical part.
Actually probably comes from the same level.
How is it possible to realize a show? Now, not with a low budget but just trying to make a budget for a show, then you start to think about the artists first because this is what makes the show on stage and the technicians and what you really want to have as a costume designer for this show.
If you want to have a stage set. It it’s very expensive to create what you are asking for right now. The technicians will tell you these costs so and so when is a limited budget. Then you can just maybe have a Picasso or building built for Pulcinella like I did in Augsburg or have some cult pieces like the shoe of Michel Fokine exposed on stage.
That cost definitely a lot of money because this is Unesco World Heritage and it was at the time really expensive to bring such a thing.
It was a Strawinsky trilogy, and it was at the same time an exposition in the town where i did this. So we asked this museum if we could have for the time being there the shoes from Fokine and the stage from Picasso, and that happened and we were amazingly happy.

Well, that is cool! Let’s stay on the topic of creating a show: where does the focus lie when you create the show. Are you doing it for the audience, or are you doing it for the needs of the artists, or are you just pushing your vision?

I think it’s just me first. It comes from me first.
What I really see as a vision…. that’s why I say me first, not just a selfish way, but it starts in me. This is an input, and then it’s a fire and then burns more, and then you start to have a vision. I am a visionary, and without those would be impossible to create anything. It’s not happening all the time but most of the time is there.
Sometimes it’s gone, and then you have to deal as well with it, like energy that goes inside of you and goes outside of you and then you’re very happy to keep it inside as long as you’re doing what you want to do , because it’s not there all the time or you think sometimes it’s not there, but it’s more than ever there so just to let yourself go, I suppose, in a modus of, doesn’t matter, just do it, just feel it right now.
Even if I feel not very settled emotionally, but I have to do that now, even if it is uncomfortable…go out of the comfort zone, very very much.
Sometimes I went into the studio, and some things didn’t make sense to me.
I did it anyway because I felt like I had to do it, and then I went back the day after, and all this became the full vision of what I had.
So, you’re letting yourself go, and then it comes back, and then you see clearly but first just give birth; it’s like giving birth every time and every day and any moment, and then you watch back on your creatures, and you try to fit them.
You have to say, “are you okay?” and then the dancers answer back, “yes, we are” and I am starting to talk about those guys in my head right now because that’s the way it is. It’s all the facet of you inside there, and then one tells the other in the creative moment don’t do this and the other okay.
This is the creation! It is always very different. I cannot say what I am going to do next time with dancers, and honestly, I cannot just let myself go, and I take a lot from them.

It’s very much a work in process. It’s also a gamble, then I guess when you just start something, and you don’t know how the dancers will develop.

In this situation, you have to gotta sell and give, and the dancers give from them to you, and then you pick it up, and then it’s kind of a ping pong all day, exchanging information. It is about emotions because I’m not just telling my dancers to do it.
I just want to feel. I want to hear the way they feel about it.
When we’re doing it, when they feel it, you see it through the face, you see the moment that they enjoy, that I created for them, and I enjoy myself much more if it happens every time.
Sometimes it’s not happening, but I know it’s there and never let it go.

What I’m hearing here now is it should be like in the job title if anyone out there wants to be a choreographer, you need to be a people person because you have to read and be there with the response of your dancers and the whole surrounding.

The way we work in our company it’s different probably because we talk about everything and we discuss a lot, and we decide a bit together what we’re going to do, what is the step to go through now.
I suppose that if you’re a good leader, you don’t slave your people, but you want to make them part of it, on the same level you are, but of course, at the end of the day I am their director, I am their choreographer. But I work very differently with my company from other companies. I’m a dancer when I’m with them, and I feel like giving them tips.
This comes from evolving together, evolving together.
Of course, I’m very picky on my choreography, it’s got to be that way, and usually, I don’t let them improvise. This is probably something that I have I don’t want to let it go.
It’s not improvising, and if I ask maybe to improvise one eight counts, it’s okay, but I have to see if it goes with the rest or I just let you be. But I see if it goes out of the range I’m the first one to say… look we bring it back or so.
I’m trying to help as well people in the company to become choreographers because I give them a chance as well very often to improvise and then from that what they did at the moment sometimes I pick it up, only sometimes it happened until now.
I know, it’s not very good to rush, but for what is concerning my work I’m really very picky about every movement, I’m kind of obsessed and I can be very pressy and sometimes a bit raspy but always really respecting everyone.
I think every choreographer has those moments where you know you follow a line but then when you see that it’s going over the borders, you bring it back on the way you know how to do it, and then it happens sometimes but rarely, yes.

Fair pay in the entertainment industry. How much should we get paid, and is the compensation right?

That’s a good question.
Of course, this is not right, and I’ll tell you why.
Sometimes artists get abused. It’s a hard point to talk about it because it’s not an easy point definitely , I’m not getting political now or just trying to go in that political direction, but this is a job that it takes us the entire life to be there, and then I think that the remuneration for this job is definitely not good enough.
For example, Operas House, I’m not telling you any name now, but I think even there the dancers are not well remunerated for the job they do.
They work from 10 in the morning until 11 in the evening with shows and with maybe two hours break in between and then three hours break before the show, so you’re the all day there, and you give your soul, you give all your energy, and then you think that the salary each month it’s not much, you can pay your apartment, you can go out not very often for dinner. 

This is kind of a sad reality, but that’s reality.
I said before people want fantasy, but they need reality, and the reality is that a dancer is struggling with his financial situation because it’s not well remunerated, has never been. Even now hasn’t changed, or I don’t know if through this time now had changed by the time I was at the theater, I was a principal dancer, and I was earning more money than a dancer for corp de ballet which is normal because it should be like that, but then I probably was in a better situation compared to my colleagues that were earning less money than I did.
I was going on stage and doing much more work than they had to do, but still, we’re not talking about such a big difference. It was something bearable, let’s say.
I sometimes saw some colleagues struggling because they had to stay all day at the theater and then you had to eat in the restaurant of the theater because you have not the time to go home, and then you give money out, or in the evening after the show, you have to eat at the theater because everything else is closed around and you give money out.
Most of the dancers live together in an apartment to try to save money most of the time. My dancers did that couple of times because this is not possible to achieve. To pay an apartment on your own today with a dancer’s salary and as a freelance dancer, then it’s really difficult.
If you get your salary every month from your own theater, you are very lucky, but as a freelance dancer, freelance choreographer as well there is no warranty and we have to deal every day with the same thing,with the same situation.

I could imagine that theaters are making use of that also because they are giving you this secure way, so that’s why maybe they also can pay a little bit less.
It’s just an opinion.

I think maybe I could break a lance in favor of the theater because I was the lucky guy.
I was at the right time at the right place, and I was very lucky to go through all my career without having any gap; only those two years when it was decided to go somewhere else, but I had no gaps.
It was fluently, and you got to be lucky, you got to be competent, you have to find the right moment.
You’re going to be patient, you’ve got to wait, and you learn by waiting.
I went through a very hard school for being a choreographer as well at the theater where I worked for 10 years because I was then residence choreographer in a very short time, so I had the 45 dancers of the company just hungry and they want from a young guy a full season. Three premieres a year, that was a big schooling when you’re so young and then you just give and by the end it’s all about experience what you bring with you.

What should happen in the industry? How should we behave to make it perfect?

That’s a difficult question as well.
If I say the word rebel, it sounds kind of hard, but no, I don’t mean rebel like you should just scream around or do bad things, but you should basically rebel for your rights and those who got lost, especially in those last two years. Yes, I think that we should speak out.

That is perfectly well said!!
Now we are coming to our last and our signature closing question. If you get the chance to put anything you want on a giant billboard, what would that be?

Okay, that’s a very spontaneous question… I will put the planet.

Would you like to leave a message also?

Just the planet, no the place where we live .this city, but I would just be a bit more generous and show our planet here that this belongs to this one where we live.
I think very global; I think how I run my life is very individual because I’m not put in any boxes. If people try to do this, then I tell them no, it’s not happening.
I’m not in a box, I’m out of those boxes, and the way I think is a very planet way. I don’t believe anymore in a small city or in a small environment, but my fantasy goes over the universe. I would put a picture of our world here and watch it again, and maybe I would just project something like the world turning around with the solar system.
Something that way would very much inspire me.
I’m a dreamer. I’m a visionary, and visions come from space.

Upcoming shows? Something in the pipeline, something that we should be aware of?

For that, what concerns my company now, we’ll wait until 2022.
I’m working on it to start big again, we hope.
If it’s nothing is going to happen before that, then they’re gonna tell us, okay, it’s not possible to do it… right now, I don’t care very much, but I start to plan and to structure the season again without thinking too much about what might come, and we’re right now leaving this moment where everything could just be shut down again.
That happened already the last production. We were ready to go, and then we had to let it go, and all was done, and so this time I’m not stopping myself from planning my life.
I just keep on planning and then what might come, we’re here, we’ll see the way we will have to deal with it because we have to deal with it.
We cannot just turn around or run away…no, face it!!
Don’t be the problem, be the solution right now!!

This is a perfect ending!

I hope you enjoyed the show. This was Velvet Legends.
Thank you to Gaetano Posterino.

I enjoyed it very much, Paul, thank you very much for such a nice time.