Natalie Weir

HK Magazine: How is your adaptation of “Turandot” different from the original?
Natalie Weir: The adaptation is very much concentrated on ideas of love and has a sympathetic viewpoint. In one scene, you see why [the title character] became cold and could not love. It’s a very emotional, contemporary-looking work where the chorus comments on the plight of the main characters.

HK: What made you decide to take on the project?
NW: The director at the time, Stephen Jefferies, approached me and gave me the music. I listened to it and thought it was so stunning, beautiful and human. It was really attractive to me.

HK: What initially drew you to choreography?
NW: I studied ballet since I was very little. In my later teenage years it became a huge passion—I was studying dance six days a week. It was my life. I came to the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane to pursue a career as a dancer, started to get an associate diploma in dance, and choreography was part of the course I was studying. I choreographed little works and found I had a flair and talent for it. My talent was noticed, and people began to nurture it. I began to be less interested in the idea of being a dancer—I was more interested in being able to speak through other dancers and being a creator of dance. By the time I was 20, I stopped dancing altogether to focus on my choreography career. It became my ultimate passion.

HK: Where do you usually get your inspirations from?
NW: More and more, my ideas or inspirations for pieces come from real life. In my earlier days I was very influenced by art, painting and poetry, but now I’m creating work based on things that have happened in my own life and things I observe. My pieces have very much to do with relationships, family, the cycle of life and time—the real things that make us human. It’s interesting how so many of those things are in “Turandot,” which is why I found it so attractive. It looks at major human conditions like love, death, life and loss. I’m not good at dancers being, [for example,] birds. My dancers are always human beings—fathers, mothers, sons, people in the street. Really my focus is that it should be emotional and cause a response in the people who watch it.

HK: What is your relationship with the dancers usually like?
NW: I’ve developed a very specific style of creating. I work very intimately with the dancers. It’s very collaborative. I don’t tell them what to do—I direct things and invite input both physically and emotionally. It’s really a two-way conversation; they’re not instruments or anything. It’s very important that they bring themselves to what’s being created so they own the work. It’s not something I’m just putting on top of them—it’s something that’s coming from inside of them.

HK: Is your style similar to other choreographers’?
NW: There’s no right or wrong way. People find their own way. Classical choreography is potentially more directive in terms of setting steps. But I’m from a contemporary background, and I wasn’t a dancer for long, so I don’t demonstrate and ask a dancer to look like me. I’m interested in the dancer moving in a way that feels natural to them. Not all contemporary works are like that, but it really works for me.