'War was coming through the window'

Hofesh Shechter is one of the hottest new names in the world of dance. He tells Judith Mackrell why he had to leave Israel to make it big
Shechter's choreography Uprising
Military moves ... Shechter's Uprising. Photograph: Ben Rudick

When Hofesh Shechter came to London from Israel six years ago, he was just a dancer looking for a job. Now he's one of Britain's most sought-after choreographers. His raw, visceral work asks probing questions about who we are. So far, it has won him one him one major award (the audience award of the 2004 Place Prize), several high-profile commissions - and the adoration of the nation's teens, thanks to his choreography for the TV drama Skins.

  1. In Your Rooms / Uprising
  2. Roundhouse,
  3. London
  1. Choreography by Hofesh Shechter
  2. Starts 27 February
  3. Until 28 February
  4. Box office:
    0844 482 8008

Dealing with big themes - perception, identity, even Darwinism - comes naturally to 33-year-old Shechter, whose most significant piece to date is In Your Rooms. Hailed by some as one of the most important new works of the millennium, it arrives at London's Roundhouse next month in a new version, following a lengthy UK tour. In it, Shechter explores the tension between the group and the individual, cutting unsettlingly between ritualised, ensemble dances and closeups of lone performers. "Everything I've experienced has left a mark on my work," he says, "and a lot of that experience has been about conflict, about struggling to make sense of things."

In Your Rooms bears traces of Shechter's traumatic time in the military. On his 18th birthday, Shechter, then a student at the Jerusalem Academy of Dance and Music, received his call-up. He knew it was coming - everyone in Israel is required to do three years' military service - but nothing prepared him for the shock of it. "In my country," he says, "we are brought up with a very strong idea of freedom. Then suddenly I was put into an institution that was the complete opposite of democratic, where we were running and doing shooting practice all day, and we didn't even get to decide when to go to the toilet. It felt like an electrical short circuit in my brain."

It is hard, now, to imagine Shechter surviving even one day in the army. He's a very neat man, sitting straight in his chair, his dark hair and beard immaculately trimmed. But the restless activity of his finely made hands - shaping a question, tapping out a rhythm - suggests how confined he must have felt in a world of institutionalised aggression. He admits he was traumatised. At best, it seemed, those three years would be a miserable stalling of his dance career; at worst, they could cost him his life.

In fact, since young Israelis who have embarked on vocational careers can qualify for lighter versions of military duty, Shechter had to survive active training for just four weeks. He did clerical work by night, but by day was allowed to dance, training with Israel's leading company, Batsheva. It was still a haunting experience: "It left me asking a lot of questions. As humans, we want to think of ourselves as free and unique, yet we still allow ourselves to become cogs in a machine. I couldn't understand how it happens. Is there anyone driving this huge truck we are all sitting in? What comes first, the individual or the mass?"

Another moment of crisis, 9/11, pushed Shechter towards choreography. "When the twin towers fell," he says, "Israel became an even more intense place. Politics and war were pouring through the windows and doors; they were everywhere. At that time, I just wanted to deal with art. I needed a quiet place to go inside myself." Shechter headed for Europe, ending up in London, where he got a job dancing for fellow Israeli choreographer, Jasmin Vardimon. London also offered greater financial opportunities: compared to Israel, where the war budget dominates, funding for the arts is much more generous. Shortly after Shechter choreographed his first work, Fragments, in 2003, he set up his own company.

As well as creating work for his own company, and composing most of his own music, Shechter has taken on commissions for more than 10 companies, including Scottish Dance Theatre and CandoCo. So serious is Shechter about his pure dance work that these commissions can feel like a holiday. He has choreographed plays for the Royal Court, among them the hard-hitting Motortown, about a soldier returning from Basra; and for Saint Joan at the National, which starred Anne-Marie Duff.

Then, of course, there's the dance sequence he choreographed for Skins, which served as a trailer for the show. Mixing a bit of disco into his usual tough intensity, the piece generated a flurry of "OMG that is well ace"-type responses on YouTube. "That was so easy," he grins, "and I was very happy with it. They filmed it superbly, and it looked really groovy. It is healthy to get my head out of contemporary dance sometimes."

Shechter's diary remains crammed. As well as the new version of In Your Rooms, and its companion piece Uprising, he will premiere an all-male work at Sadler's Wells, London, in March; an all-female dance will follow in May, his company's first as company-in-residence at Brighton's Dome; and there's also talk of an open-air extravaganza on Brighton beach.

Despite all this, Shechter is wary of talking in terms of a "career". Making dance is what interests him: he has a horror of being typecast, of being required to churn out a certain type of work as if he were a brand. His choreography may tap deeply into the political and emotional spirit of our time, but cheap notions of celebrity and success are anathema to him. "My greatest fear," he says, "is choreographing without feeling the reasons for what I'm doing - of being on automatic pilot. I would prefer to go and sell burgers in McDonald's".

• This article was amended on Wednesday 4 February 2009. We have made the following small corrections:
1. Hofesh Schechter did not win the Place Prize in 2004, he was a finalist. He did win the audience award.
2. Schechter's military service lasted one year, not just four weeks.
3. Schechter's company is company-in-residence at the Brighton Dome, he is not choreographer-in-residence.
4. The Roundhouse's phone number is actually 0844 482 8008.

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