Before taking Hell on the road, Greco and Scholten were staging the world premiere of The Assassin Tree, a chamber opera, at the Edinburgh International Festival. After seeing their work two years ago, festival director Sir Brian McMaster asked them to create the modern opera.

That and passport problems had Greco tarmac-hopping between Scotland and Southern Italy, leaving precious few moments for interviews like this one. Even with the travel hassles and two major productions launching, he sounded serene when we spoke by phone two days before his opera opened.

CP: How hard is it to premiere a new opera and tour a new ballet at the same time?

EG: Assassin Tree and Hell ... has been a creative stream and they nourish each other artistically. When we were at Montpellier, we were a little worried about the conflicts, but in fact, it feels like a natural continuity. When we were creating Hell, we had some thought that some of this belongs in the other.

CP: The design elements in your works seem as important as your choreography. How do you and Pieter create a piece?

EG: We started with the [idea of] the dancing body [being] able to create a concrete space of its own, a visionary space to express all of its hidden potential. All of our spaces onstage are very articulated but not always occupied. The presence of light that travels, for instance.

CP: You dance in Hell which makes it harder to choreograph.

EG: Pieter and my roles are coming together with this. We both directed Hell.

CP: What dance styles are you using?

EG: I don't know if I can say. Many critics try to define our work and we've had some interesting comments. This dance in Hell is like a Babel Tower of choreography — what we want to say with the dramaturgy of the flesh and blood. Of course it is contemporary. In Hell it is a result of our body language that we have questioned for 10 years — the evolution of this movement language. We use the medium of our body [to] incorporate more recognizable dance expression, and [we draw] from culture — it can be ballet, the energy from cabaret and others like [Japanese] Butoh.

CP: How powerful is it to dance in the nude to the music of Beethoven? Why did you decide to do it in the buff?

EG: Because of exactly what you say. That kind of sublimation. It is [a] powerful experience to do it, every time. This was a certain result of the process of the choreography. It was not a place for costumes. Nudity was the ... only way — at that moment, after all of the choices physically and psychologically — to dance the rest of the piece. All the dancers are doing that section.

CP: What has it been like creating pieces with Pieter?

EG: He was always close to the dance world. He was writing and directing theater. He started to think he would abandon theater because he felt that dance and ballet for him were the language of the future. That was in mind when we met and we tried to make dance-theater. We worked for years to sharpen our proposals and ideas to articulate our artistic plan.

CP: Do you get to dance as much as you want to now?

EG: Of course not.

(l_whittington@citypaper.net)