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Within the construction of a programming logic, there are arguments that do not apply, because of the pettiness in their formulation. In a year in which it was possible to see the same artists – and many times the same shows – in so many festivals, there were cases in which the biggest flaw to point out was precisely fidelity to oneself. That is what happens with Raimund Hoghe, the German choreographer I pick as personality of the year. All because of a confession I heard in utter disbelief.

In the night in which the winners of the awards for best choreographer and performer of the year were announced, according to a selection made by critics invited by Ballettanz, Raimund Hoghe, who would climb an improvised stage in one of the rooms of Sommerbar, in Berlin, confessed to me that, in spite of the success he was enjoying in France, his presence was getting scarce in German stages. And moving his work place to Paris was the main reason why he accepted coming to receive a distinction that was, actually, more a tribute than anything else. In that warm August night, he added that the fact that the list of invited critics included so many foreigners probably justified the choice. The reason: himself. The programmers, above all the German ones, would tell him that his shows had too much Raimund Hoghe and too little dance. They weren’t necessarily complaining about the lack of movement, an argument that is frequently thrown in the face of a choreographer that works with the essence of a gesture instead of the superficiality and artificiality of movement. They really complained of an occupation of the stage by a character that, they said, had already proved to be capable of going beyond the impact of the image, in spite of being a strange figure and that was now reduced to a formula that bordered exhibitionism.

Raimund Hoghe is, in fact, as famous for his extreme demanding ways in his work as he is for the rickets that ails him and the hump that disfigures his back. His appearance may cause repulsion and it is true that Hoghe has taken that as a fundamental starting point to really question what we talk about when we talk about the body. And, because of that, he has one of the most intelligent views of dance. A view that is truly current instead of contemporary. As he dedicates himself to a skin deep comprehension of the classics (he already did it with Swan Lake, The Rite of Spring, L’aprés-midi d’un faune or Bolero), to the exposition of an egotistic and raw body confronting more perfect ones (his Young People, Old Voices, but also in the seminal piece Regi, by Boris Charmatz), and above all to a (ab)use of biography (Meinwarts, Lecture-performance) or the dislocation of identity and even a provocation of alterity, as in the case of Maria Callas (36, Avenue Mandel) in which he created a rare and unique dramaturgical body, intransmissible in its most beautiful, most ephemeral and most tragic aspects.

To imagine that the most innovative (with all the risks resulting from it) of international contemporary choreographers may be left out because of programming logics that fear the repulsion of the spectator (many of them disguising, in this way, their own profound ignorance and reveling the great contempt they have for the work they say they do) is not only very serious but is also constantly haunted by an aesthetic elitism with totalitarian outlines we could not imagine possible in a country like Germany. And however…

However, none of this is new. Almost fifteen years ago, in another allegedly democratic country, American critic Arlene Croce’s article about the victimization of Bill T. Jones became famous. The eminent New York Times critic wrote an article seeking to prove that Bill T. Jones used the fact of being black, homosexual and HIV positive to victimize himself. In refusing to criticize him (to give him an equal status as “the others”) Croce believed to be doing her job, not exactly of a judge who legitimizes, but more of a moralizing warrantor in a discipline that could not be sustained “only” in aspects that are extemporary to the choreography. It was like that with Bill T. Jones and his Still/Here, it seems to be like that with Hoghe. Hoghe is allowed to be Hoghe as long as he is a little less Hoghe.

It will not be necessary to remember that the discourse about the body in Germany assumed peculiar outlines, much because of historical and political reasons. And that dance, in this specificity, was able to amplify in an extremely clairvoyant magnifying glass a reflection that goes way beyond the immediate representation and identification. Pina Bausch, particularly in the encounter she promotes with the bodies that she finds in her many wanderings around the world, Susanne Linke, with a tenser and more dramatic body and even Brecht, in theater, Fassbinder, in cinema, with his multiple bodies and  tending to a soul-matter conflict, are all part of the complex universe Hoghe shares and sometimes shatters.

His intelligence is more disturbing than his ugliness. And the sharpness of his proposals is more telling of the rhetoric in which programming logics have been based on, selections, support programs, international strategies or thematic programs in mediocre festivals, which is a drawback to understand what is supposed to be said. With the argument, to which he cannot, and does not want to escape, the programmers back an author who knows well that a body is worth less than the image we have of him. To have found, or not, a formula to defend one of the most serious and oblique theories of the choreographic discursive construction is a surplus that replaces all the badly explained theories about the tastes of the audiences.