Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Innovator

May 12, 2006

Royston Maldoom never benefited from any specific  training or any kind of choreography studies. If he could, he would abolish all institutions, educational studies, censorship and competition. He has worked with street children in Ethiopia and neo-Nazis in Potsdam, workers and children in Peru, adolescents in Bosnia, with persons with  disabilities as well as with convicts. Whoever knows Maldoom agrees in saying that if the persons he works with were not as hopeless, his impact and success would not be as stunning.

But getting someone who has no sense of movement, no training, no physical condition or even interest in it to  dance - this is the real challenge. The less talented the interpreter is,  the more triumphant will be the victory, considers Maldoom.

Maldoom did not discover dance before he turned 22. Back then, he was a farmer and one day he watched a film about ballet. Before, in school, I was a bully and the class clown. I was just like these children he says. Therefore I am not impressed by their attitude. And that you know yourselves.

As a choreographer, he makes an electrifying, unique performance. We danced in musicals and while doing so I kept thinking about washing laundry. Amateurs do not have any experience. For them, it is only a game. This contrast offers something brutal, unchanged to the performance A professional wouldn’t be able to do anything like that.