'The dancer is a bond between earth and sky.'

S.B.: For me, there are basically two kinds of choreographers. There are the visionaries who project their mental images on stage - the American choreographer Alwin Nikolais is a good example of this type - and there are those like myself for whom dance is part of a questioning process. For me, choreography is like a detective novel in which the questions are: who does what? where? when? and how? I leave out "why" ? because in choreography the "why" emerges from all the other factors.

* Could you tell us something about your methods?

S.B.: My approach to choreography is not narrative, but abstract. I have developed a process in which a series of questions are asked about the structure, space and time. For example: where the dance is situated on stage, which dancer enters from which side, who begins, and so on. I have evolved a process of questioning in which the answers are given by using the tools of chance - flipping a coin, drawing lots, or throwing dice. This allows me to work on the borderline between what I know and what I do not know. By using methods of construction based on chance I can construct pieces that I could never have imagined otherwise.

I prepare a section of the choreography on a piece of paper, beginning with the structure and the many details of each movement - its direction, which part of the body evokes which quality, its duration, and various other details. Then, working with the dancers in the studio, drawing on their energy and the atmosphere at that specific moment, I read the results of the questions from the paper I have prepared. The dancers have to be very alive and alert to capture the essence of the movement that flows out of my body at that precise moment - because once I repeat it, it loses its initial impact.

* Would you agree with the idea that dance is a cerebral art?

S.B.: I strongly believe that movement in post-modern dance springs from thought, setting aside movements prompted only by animal instincts. The principles of post-modern dance originate in a certain tradition that can be traced back to theories set forth by Kandinsky and Klee.

When we see choreography as the result of a thought process, we can always feel an underlying sense of construction. All human beings have a basic need to build, in the same way that birds build nests. When choreography is "constructed", spectators can sense its latent structure even if they cannot actually see it or identify it. I think one of the reasons why contemporary dance is interesting and elicits a wide public response is that it responds to this basic need. Of course there is the pleasure of seeing the dancer dance, but there is also something more.

* Do you believe that gestures and movements have a cultural origin?

S.B.: Of course they do. I noticed this when I came from America to France in 1970, but I have felt it even more strongly working with Japanese dancers since 1992. The Japanese live very close to the floor, they take off their shoes when they enter a house, and they kneel for long periods while working or discussing. This relationship to the ground and this sitting posture give them a unique sense of verticality, something quite different from the Western experience. This verticality, incidentally, gives the Japanese very powerful hips and I have taken advantage of this in my work with them.

If there is such a thing as a culture of space, it certainly exists in Japan where space is a highly elaborated code. People do not touch one another in public. Although they are packed like sardines in the subway, there is a feeling that they are not touching. When meeting, there is always a sense of distance between people - not as a divider but as something that brings people together and relates individuals to the community. True contact is based on an absence of physical contact.

This creates a specific approach to the way people work together. This "non-touching" makes the body more vibrant and emphasizes the way it situates itself in space. Japanese dancers are far more keenly aware than Western dancers of where they are in space. Dancer, choreography and space become one. As a choreographer who is passionate about space, I felt entirely at home in Japan.

* What else did you learn from your time in Japan?

S.B.: During my first visit to Japan in 1989, I discovered bugaku, a dance form that came to Japan from China in the seventh century and is performed in a strictly confined space. In Japan, special architectural spaces are set aside for dance, whereas in the West dance is always performed in borrowed spaces.

The indigenous traditional dance of Japan is kagura, whose many forms are directly related to the agrarian cycle - from planting to harvesting, particularly rice. There are nearly 60,000 kagura dance forms still in existence in Japan today. Each is danced but once a year, by the villagers, conceived for a specific place, on a specific date, for a specific reason. We know from written sources that some of these forms have existed for at least a thousand years. All the dances take place in specially created areas which are sometimes destroyed after being used.