Choreographer Olivier Dubois on his all-nude new show Tragédie

With 18 naked performers and an on-stage rave, Tragédie isn’t your average dance show — but as a short, pot-bellied late bloomer, Olivier Dubois isn’t your average choreographer. He tells Lyndsey Winship why nudity works for him

Body work: the naked performers in Tragédie are “humanity laid bare”

I first saw Olivier Dubois perform in Vienna in 2008. He was pot-bellied, dressed only in his underwear and gyrating around a pole, with a collection of dildos scattered across the stage. It was entertaining, provocative and a little bit gross but not obvious that we were witnessing a future luminary of the European dance scene.

Six years on, Dubois, 41, has leapt to choreographic prominence and has a breakout hit on his hands. His latest show, Tragédie, which has its UK premiere next month, bypasses the pole dancing but does have plenty of nudity. The 18 performers are stark naked from start to finish, in fact. And while that’s been garnering him plenty of publicity, Tragédie is a work that suggests an artist with more in his armoury than shock tactics.

Dubois is the unlikeliest of dancers — short, solidly built, a tad fleshy — and he didn’t start dancing until the age of 23. He comes from a wealthy family in Provence, with the kind of upbringing in which your career options are “a bishop, an army officer or a diplomat”, as he puts it. He studied languages, law and economics and was heading down the diplomacy route until one day, out of the blue, he said to himself, “I need to dance”.

Considering most professional dancers have already been training for 20-odd years by that age, it sounds like a laughable proposition. But Dubois duly began to work intensively, taking four classes a day, devouring books, videos and performances. He didn’t have a dancer’s physique but he did have extraordinary flexibility: he surprised his teachers by being able to lift his ankle to his ear.

His bemused parents agreed to support him financially on the condition that he would return to his studies if he didn’t get a job after one year. “A year to be a professional dancer is almost impossible,” he points out, and yet he got a job after six months.

He went on to dance with French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj and experimental Flemish director Jan Fabre, and began to choreograph his own work. His initial offerings were well received but the success of Tragédie, when it was first performed at the Festival d’Avignon in 2012, has taken him to another level.

“It’s like a blockbuster or something,” he says. Based on the structure of Greek tragedy, it is a meticulously constructed minimalist piece, with hypnotically repetitive movements (walking, mainly) backed by a pounding bass, which all builds up into what is essentially a giant rave on stage. It’s a compelling experience.

Feeling the heat: “If I don’t [create] I will burn,” says Dubois The “tragedy” at the heart of the piece, says Dubois, is the fact that “being human doesn’t equal humanity”. Humanity has to be cultivated and nurtured.

“This is our human tragedy,” he says. The nudity (which is fascinating but not titillating) is essential, he explains, since this is humanity laid bare. “In each of those bodies you can read the history of the world, a map of civilisation.”

It also brings the audience deeper into the work, he thinks, because when you look at other people’s bodies you can’t help but reflect on your own. “It brings you to a deep intimate relation to your body and so to the world.”

For most of the dancers this is the first time they’ve gone naked on stage, and there was plenty of initial discomfort about the idea, but Dubois knew what he was asking them to do.

“I’ve performed a lot naked,” he says. “Every time I was working with a choreographer they wanted me to be naked. Every time! Just me!

“So I’ve been naked many times and I know what it’s like when you don’t want to do it. When you arrive at the theatre and you don’t feel good that day. You have to be strong. Everybody develops their own protection.”

Dubois’ parents have been to see all his shows, naked or otherwise, and they’re very proud of their maverick son, if still a little bemused. “My mum is like, ‘But where does it come from? What is this black thing inside? Why do you scream?’”

Is that what your work is, I ask, a scream? “It is a huge scream — a scream for life; a scream for resistance. The more I create, the more I go dark. I’m really happy but the more I create, the more I go into the black deep, the harder it is to close the scar.

“There’s a saying in French,” he goes on, “to have ‘le feu aux fesses’. It means you’re horny but the literal meaning is that you have the fire at your butt. And I have this feeling that there’s something running after me. I have to run faster and faster and if I don’t run, I will burn. Creating is like running, and if I don’t do it, I will burn.”

All this makes Dubois sound like a dark character but he comes across as exactly the opposite: smiley, jolly, chatty. And he’s certain that following his sudden, surprising impulse to dance 18 years ago was the right thing to do.

“This thing [dance] is ruling my world, my life, completely,” he beams. “I know why I wake up every day. I’m happy, definitely. Every day I’m like: ‘Wow, let’s go! Let’s work!’”

Tragédie is at Sadler’s Wells, EC1 (0844 412 4300, sadlerswells.com) May 8-10.