Lieven Thyrion

To Crush Time
Portrait: Comm’sa Ghent

Lieven Thyrion is the producer at the heart of Les Ballets C de la B, the Ghent-based company originally led by Alain Platel, and now formed as a collective of choreographers. Lieven has taken Les Ballets from a protracted early phase when the company worked without funding in Ghent, through to the international renown and performing life it has enjoyed for many years now.

Out of an early friendship as students, Lieven and Alain built a close collaborative relationship. From the beginning Lieven's passionate belief in Alain's work was a driving force in the company. As well as their personal friendship, Alain and Lieven shared strong political and social beliefs, and they ensured that Les Ballets expressed itself as a collective right from the start. Amongst the group of early collaborators, Lieven was the one to piece together the producer's role, taking on the challenge of resourcing the company's vision, devising structures, and forging the relationships that would make this possible.

A strong sense of social mission was a driving force behind the company's work. Lieven's personal commitment took him to invest his entire professional career and maturing contribution as a producer into Les Ballets. He has offered his ideals, his passion, his ability to persuade, his prodigious energy for friendships and people, and a lively business acumen which he has sensitively harnessed to the company's political and social aims.

The company is currently building a home for itself in the heart of Ghent. When this is complete, in time Lieven and Alain are preparing to hand the company and its structure over to a younger generation. The sustained emergence from those earliest student beginnings through to a fully realised vision and a mature creative structure that can be offered on to others is Lieven's extraordinary achievement.

I met Alain when I was a biology student and he was studying psychology. We went to see Pina Bausch. If you don't fall in love with movement at that point, forget it. I thought, oh my god, biology is not all there is, Darwin can't help me now. When I saw Alain and other friends perform something in their front room the first time, I felt deeply that this guy had something important, special. I believed very strongly in him, I was ready to fight for it. I saw he was not only a really lovely human being, but also he was capable of something great. By 1983, I had an aim - I knew I wanted to do something for Alain. I had no notion of being a producer, but I knew I could help because Alain is shy, and I am not.

I wanted people to understand that this Platel had something to say that is completely different from others. I was sure about this - his ideas about how movement - art - could be part of their lives, his deep concern with other human beings. There was something much more important than what he did: it was how he did it and why. Alain became my way of expressing my own political feelings, my social engagement. Throughout, Les Ballets has expressed the need to be concerned for one another. It's the
only reason theatre exists for me. Otherwise I would have been a biologist finding solutions for diseases.

From the start, Alain and I have known that I do the 'blah blah blah' and Alain creates things. I like to talk, to convince, and that was what was needed. I didn't know the word 'producer' - I had to figure out what to do. I started thinking but I didn't have the vocabulary. So I listened, and I learned. I saw how other Flemish artists were having success abroad, and I understood that we also must get out beyond Ghent. And in time we saw that we could not carry on without financial support, and I saw how I would need to find backing from abroad as well as at home.

While we all earned our living doing other things, I sold insurance door to door. It was unbelievable hell, but I made some money out of it. I'm so happy I went through this, it made me so strong, this slamming of the doors. I thought, if I can make this work with life insurance, I know I can make this work with art, which is so much more important. Over time, I saw that I was armed - and I was dangerous! I can sell - I can sell anything - but this was not what I was doing. I wanted people to support Alain with some money and with some space in a theatre, because I felt that what he was doing was so important. Those early years finding the people who would support Alain, building relationships based on what I really felt about him and what he was doing, it meant I was creating a network. In turn I could use this network to find backing for the other choreographers.

From the start, we knew - he didn't have to convince me, I didn't have to convince him - that Les Ballets would be a collective. Every opinion from each person, wherever this person was sitting in the hierarchy, it didn't matter, the opinion was absolutely valid. This mutual agreement, involvement in decisions, this depth of discussion, was absolutely equal to Alain's principles of theatre. And then in the late 1980s the collective principle became that everybody who dances with Alain can make their own piece. Alain began to work for other companies too, and other members of Les Ballets began to make our work as well.

Through our structure, by talking together we arrive at the decisions as to which artists will make work and what budgets to employ. Talking, talking, like the tribes of Africa, until the end of days. Sometimes it is very difficult, very aggressive, there is weeping, but we have always managed. We go to the table, we sit down, and we talk. We are all from Ghent, and Ghent is a city of argument, disagreement, against authority as a matter of principle. We were so lucky that, when Alain became internationally successful around 1994, he kept by the principles decided upon ten years before. We have developed these principles organically over time - we still do. I am sometimes amazed that we were not overthrown in this by our own success or other influences. To protect this, we have kept one standard system for how we are all paid - by age. This is my one real watchdog function.

I only started to focus strongly on the company's finances in the early 1990s, when we first got funding and I saw that we needed to earn more money, that we were in a differentphase now. The only thing I have ever done in a thinking way - not from the heart - was to find a financial director at that point. I took time to cultivate him, to nurture his understanding of the company's values, and then after some years, I asked him to join me as my right hand in the decision making, the strategy.

Gradually I have built it up to the point where we are able to find the support we need through co-producers. It has got to the point where we make the phone calls, and we find the support. This is true for all the choreographers. At the same time, the government's support has grown. Now Les Ballets' turnover is five million euros a year, and we are working and touring in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America. We have a strong market value, and I protect this to invest in the work. We are making several productions each year, and we tour as much as we can, so the dancers can earn a living and the choreographers can discover their audience.

At a certain point, we understood that we need our own building. We know it will change us, but we want this independence. We have studied, talked, learned about this, pursued this consciously. For five years I have lobbied for our own home, but I lobbied for ten years for Alain to get real production money, and so this is not a problem. My argument has been my absolute belief that we need it. I closed the door behind me, crossed to the politicians' side and told them I will stay there with them until I get what I need. Always in a gentle way, I explained that I cannot go back, my bridge is burnt. It took five years, but of course I got it. And no compromise. At one point, a politician insisted that we have a historical figure, important in Flanders' nationalistic feelings, on our building. I said no, and we had a confrontation. But he is a politician, he's playing a game. I am not, so I will win this. Even worse, he's a politician, he's there for a time. I am here forever.

Now we know that in time we will hand this over, we will give it to the youngsters. Somewhere in the hundred or so people in the planetary system of Les Ballets are those who will take it on in future. We will give it to those we believe in. We will downsize it again, and give them the space, and the subsidies for the salaries to have time as artists. We hope they will pursue the same values, the same deep interest in humanity.

This has cost so much energy, so much energy. It's unbelievable, the only thing I've done in my life, can you imagine? But I'm very proud of it.

I can see now that my contribution has been that I have realised the dream. Not alone, of course. I realised dreams, made them tangible. I am sure about that now, not only for Alain but for the whole group. You cannot imagine what this feels like. Some of those who work with us tell me how much it means for them to work for Les Ballets. This is what I want to be paid with, this kind of honesty, these emotions.

The hardest things have been the private price, the price paid in your private life. I am very lucky that Kate my wife, who is a member of the company, is still with me. And my children, the time to be with them. The other hardest thing has been the compromises that I have had to accept making. I don't talk about these with Alain, but he has never cut himself off from this part of what I have had to pursue at times. The esteem towards me from him is immense.

After, I want to continue to produce. I will help Alain with the work he has still to make - a book, a film, more dance theatre. And I will help the younger artists. I feel I have a mission, a way I can help younger producers. I want to help them find their energy, to explain why they should fight for their artists, find their passion. When I see colleagues of mine who are younger, they face pressures for quick success, quick money, in a way that we did not.

I hope in your book you can capture the flame, the heat inside, because I am not playing a game with you, I'm not joking, this is me. The flame is the subject of your book. It's not the skills, we know we need skills and we can learn those. It's something different, a flame, something burning, restless. I'm stuck with this, and therefore you will be stuck with this, you will be part of this, because I can do no other than express it through what I do.