“Everybody Can Be Romeo and Juliet”: Anne Imhof on Love, Danger, and DOOM

When the singer, performance artist, and New York City legend Justin Vivian Bond entered the Park Avenue Armory last week to take in DOOM: House of Hope, the new show—or spectacle, rather—by the award-winning German artist Anne Imhof, she experienced something like sensory overload. “I get so freaked out being in crowds,” Bond recounted. But it wasn’t long before she gave into Imhof’s mammoth vision, letting the sights, sounds, and movements of the Armory’s 55,000 square-foot Drill Hall wash over her for the duration of the three-hour performance, which features mascots, cheerleaders, rock songs, no less than two-dozen Cadillac Escalades, and a battalion of chiseled dancers and performers, including Imhof’s longtime muse Eliza Douglas. “Storytelling is super important in the piece,” Imhof told Bond when the two got together on Zoom last week to discuss the show, which tells the star-crossed tale of Romeo and Juliet in reverse. “Notoriously, my pieces are plotless,” she continued. “But I wanted this story about human love that is universal, where everybody can be Romeo and Juliet.” Below, the artists discuss ill-fated love, abuses of power, and how the presence of an audience can make art come alive.

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VIVIAN BOND: How are you? How are you feeling?

ANNE IMHOF: I’m good. I’m a bit exhausted. Today’s hitting me. It’s the day off, and that’s the day it hits hardest.

BOND: You’ve been running on adrenaline for days, I imagine, if not weeks.

IMHOF: And I love it. It’s what I live for. And this is the call that I was really waiting for. I always love talking to you.

BOND: Thank you. First of all, let me just say that I love the show. I was overwhelmed by it. 

IMHOF: Thank you.

BOND: It was really so epic. I went in there not knowing what I had in store. I mean, how could I? At first I was like, “This is my worst nightmare,” because I found out it was going to be three hours long and that we were standing and I get so freaked out being in crowds. Then, when the gates opened and everybody spread out, I was like, “Oh, if I slink around these cars, I can back myself against one and no one can really get near me.” I found a strategy very quickly, and then I really got into it. It was beautiful, but I was very resistant at first. When did you start working on this particular piece? 

IMHOF: It always starts when the last piece ends. I gather material. Then, one year ago, the Armory invited me. I started from there onwards, but it had different phases. First, it was me alone. Then it was with a group of people in Los Angeles. Sihana [Shalaj] was one of them. Josh [Johnson] was one of them. During that time, I always talk to people individually. The assigned roles—head of choreography or this or that—are important as a way to navigate, and we did give ourselves titles in the very beginning, even though we were not in the entertainment industry or in theater. But still, it made a little bit of a buzz. People in the art world don’t like if a crowd of people comes with an artist because they find it breaks the elitist boundaries of the art world or is too commercial or too popular culture, which is trash. But I always showed up with others and it wasn’t clear to us or to the institution we’re working with who actually did what. For this particular piece, I worked with two really young guys from Berlin who are extremely talented. One of them is Levi Strasser, who plays Romeo. We spent the whole summer basically putting this piece together and developing ideas. Some of them are not in the piece anymore, but they were kind of the foundation. All these things created a world in a sense, but it takes a while.

BOND: I did my MA at Central St. Martins in sonography. I saw on the program somebody had the title “sonographer,” which is so rare. It’s such a fascinating way of working to me—coming up with names for everybody and what they do—because it gets rid of a lot of the hierarchies within a project. It’s for an institution, but it’s not necessarily for art.

IMHOF: Exactly. I think the more the work grew, we had to do it like this. I work with a really good team. For example, Niklas Bildstein [Zaar] did the sonography together with Andrea Faraguna, who’s an architect. My art studio is actually small, so we have a couple of people that are very close to me and can navigate it quickly. But when we do a work like this, it grows bigger. This time, it was very fun to work on the piece with individuals and then bring everything together. It’s what I live for, actually.

BOND: Conceptually, did you begin with just an idea, or did you have a text that was the initial jumping point for you?

IMHOF: That’s a good question, because when I talk to somebody, I’m almost making shit up in the moment. Somehow that comes easiest to me. When I have to write something down and fix it, it’s harder. I’m a sucker for whatever energy this life brings, and moments between people are almost alive. You know what I mean?

BOND: I totally know what you mean, yes. That’s why I never write anything down if I can help it. Because you write it and then you’re—

IMHOF: Over it.

BOND: Well, I’m already editing it before I finish being creative. It’s this way of judging things as you go along, which interrupts the flow of the idea. That, I think, is part of what is great about rehearsal. There’s so much technical stuff that has to be timed. But within the performance, between the performers and the audience, there’s life. You can’t just cut that off.

IMHOF: For me, it’s good if pieces have a lifespan. They are created and, within them being presented before the audience, they’re still created in a way, but then they’re over. The creation is happening throughout the piece, but because it’s so big, we had to make many decisions before. I wanted a love story. Somehow, it was about love—the whole thing. But it’s also really about the people that I’m developing it with. I had a cast in mind, and I was developing the piece with the core cast. Levi was doing a lot, and Jacob [Madden] and Sihana. Then Eliza [Douglas] and I decided to work together, so that was a big step for us. But it’s a piece in New York and for New York, and Eliza and I lived here. She’s that for me. Somehow, these characters come together, and even though Levi and Jacob and Josh and others have very present roles, it’s a heavily female-identifying cast. There’s Devon Teuscher from the ABT. There’s Remy Young, a young dancer in the ABT that’s very talented, who is playing Juliet. Sihana is playing Romeo, then Levi’s playing the other Romeo. I met Talia Ryder a while back at a dinner, and she said, “Oh, I want to work with you.” We didn’t even talk much. She just came up to me, but she played amazing roles in the movies I saw. I reached out to her through a dancer that knew Talia was actually a good dancer, and I like that there’s an actress playing a ballet dancer. So I have this super potent, super talented, female-identifying cast, and I can show these images that were always missing for me. Also, Efron [Danzig], she’s a pro skater in New York. For me, this was the kind of image that I want to see: females saying, “I have the power to make the end decision if I need to.” That’s also the Juliet role. She holds this power, and I like that a lot.

BOND: Your cast is so young. I’m curious, because I’m in my sixties—

IMHOF: As a side note, you look so beautiful.

BOND: Thank you. It’s not from clean living, I assure you. But I was talking to this guy who was there last night, who was also in his sixties, and he was saying that he was annoyed that there were so many old people in the audience. I hadn’t really noticed that. I thought it was great that there were so many young people there because, when I go see things in the art world, young people are not always as clued in. But there’s such an expiration date for humanity that I didn’t grow up with—people coming of age in a time that is sort of hopeless in a way, with the governments turning against the people and the encroachment of climate change. I’m curious how working with them informed the feelings of doom and hope within this artistic statement.

IMHOF: Most of them are in their twenties to thirties. That’s the age range. I think people growing up right now, there’s a vulnerability in becoming and not knowing what you are becoming and what you have to face. That’s in all of us, no matter how old or young we are. But they have a better angle towards this vulnerability, and that is very much what they bring to the table. That’s their take on literature, on what they say, what they want to say, what they don’t say. I do performance in this way—I come with a clear vision that has a lot of openness. I wouldn’t tell somebody what to do in the performance. I bring a text and we work on the text. For example, with Levi and Jacob, I gathered all the texts that I love that informed this piece, and we went through them and figured out what to say and who could be the Romeo in the poet’s world. I was interested in this Bach piece that I wanted to have played on the piano, but it was very unclear who would play it. Two people were on the table that somehow didn’t feel right, and then I met Jacob Madden, this young pianist. I wanted to make a ballet that sits in the piece, like a play in the play, and I wrote a song for it. Then he brought this Bach partita and played it for me, and—because I’m such a non-trained person in music—he was like, “Oh, this is actually the same chord progression.” Somehow a lot of these things came together in this way, like a puzzle. I felt a need to include Bach because it’s universal music that gets at the most intense feelings. Tarkovsky uses Bach, for example, when shit drops hard for people to understand that it’s the end of the world. A lot of things felt very universal, and coming back to that vulnerability, we are all in a world that is very vulnerable and ruled by people who don’t give a fuck. But when I see five women on stage in America, not one that is singled out as the queen, I love that. That’s how it should be. They should show what they’re able to do. People in power always do the most fucked up shit right before they go down, and the people who can make them go down fear the fucked up shit because it makes them quiet. The people that I worked with on this piece, they’re not like that. They’re not quiet, and they won’t be. They give a fuck. They come from different places, but there’s something that makes them come together in this piece. Storytelling is super important in the piece—these ballet gestures can tell a story. Notoriously, my pieces are plotless. But I wanted this story about human love that is universal, where everybody can be Romeo and Juliet. And it’s fine.

BOND: Right. The performance is very cinematic, so the audience in a certain way is the editor. I felt that way as I was making choices about where I was going to stand or what I was drawn to. As a spectator, you start to make your story for yourself based on the information that you’re seeing. Aside from the beauty of the choreography and the staging and the performances, the soundscape of the piece is also really incredible. I loved the part where Eliza was singing. That was gorgeous.

IMHOF: I made a small piece in L.A. in 2023. I made it, actually, for Levi and Jacob and another dancer that I worked with from Paris, Ruben Noel. It was people standing on a car, and Levi had this text that he read. Basically, it’s about how he’s slowly losing his mind. There was something about him standing on a car that made it a good image, but when I thought about the Armory, I wanted to have it stripped bare. There is something universal that I wanted to say. When you want people to understand what you have in your head, it’s hard. I can’t even talk to the people I work with in a sentence, but they knew exactly what to do right away. It feels very good to create together. It was kind of magical for me to create with these super talented people and have the chance to put it out there. Eliza, for sure—I can very much rely on her eyes and on her presence on stage. She goes on stage and kills it. But it’s not one person; it’s created by a lot of people. The commitment that people brought into this is kind of humbling and beautiful for me.

BOND: All those cars not moving, they were like coffins of civilization around which all of this life was taking place. Anyway, I just thought it was brilliant. That’s all.

IMHOF: Wow, thank you. This is amazing to hear from a performer like you. You’re the best.

BOND: I wish I could see it again, actually, because I would go in with a better attitude.

IMHOF: Now, I lift the crowd barricades earlier. I think it’s good when the entry is cut a bit shorter.

BOND: Well, I got there very early and I could have been right at the front. But then I was like, “Oh god, how am I going to see?” I started to freak out.

IMHOF: Yeah. There’s a fine line between frustration and desire. You let everybody take their own position and angle. I love making compositions that I’ve seen from all sides. Maybe that’s also a sculptural thing—

BOND: No, it was wonderful. Once I got through that barrier and got into the flow of it, I felt all of this agency to move wherever I wanted to be. I didn’t come with a friend. I was just by myself, so I could just float around and make these pictures for myself. I really started to feel like I was part of the process because I was so deeply engaged and in this flow that was my own. I wasn’t always going the same direction. A lot of the audience would go in one direction and I’d be like, “Oh, I’m going to curl around this way” or, “I’m not going to move at this point.” It was really fun as an audience member to feel like I was part of the creative process.

IMHOF: It’s just like that. It only comes together when the audience is there. The general rehearsal’s more for the technicalities, but not for trying out performances. I think that’s also what people like Levi and Sihana and the dancers from the ABT felt. We were interested in the same thing—being able to do things over and over again in a different way. I thought I could have the others basically mimic what’s going on on the floor, but the stage came way later. The ballet has to be on a stage because it’s also about form; it has to be elevated and there has to be a hierarchy.

BOND: Also, the safety of the performers.

IMHOF: Exactly.

BOND: I appreciated that it felt like the performers were being protected. It could feel very dangerous in certain ways. 

IMHOF: I had that feeling the first night because, in the solo moment when Devon was starting to dance, people were not clearing the space. I suddenly had this idea: “The ballerina is not only on stage and untouchable—you don’t see her efforts and her exhaustion.” It’s 32 fouettes. Being super close to the audience, you can show your exhaustion. They can see your sweat and your breathing. I thought, “Oh, this is amazing.” But I had this feeling of fear that somebody could get hurt. It was like, “Was that idea to bring her this close to the audience on one level actually a good one? Or does it need the stage as a hierarchical idea, and is this untouchable moment maybe also good?” There’s something about it that was really in my head on the opening night.

BOND: Well, you play on so many different levels—very high up on those balconies and on top of the cars and on the floor. I think by that point, when they were actually on that stage, it made sense because we had become accustomed to seeing things in so many different levels of presentation. There were times where I was watching the show and I couldn’t see what was happening, so I was literally watching it on someone’s phone that was recording it.

IMHOF: What do you prefer, being live or being filmed?

BOND: Oh, I prefer being live. I love singing, the actual act of singing. So when I’m recorded, it’s so uninteresting to me. I don’t ever care if I ever hear it again, and I’m not getting joy from it. But when I sing live in front of people, I get to choose what I sing, what I say, who I perform with, where I perform. I just love singing. Of course, I paint and I have other practices, but I don’t take time away from singing.

IMHOF: Yeah, there’s something about the voice that is very important right now.

BOND: It’s healing, the vibrations, bringing people together and sharing thoughts. And this what I thought was so great about your show, for such a large cast and a diverse group of people to be creating this idea that we all were sharing.

IMHOF: That was one of my biggest challenges, to find something that is the voice of the artwork and that the others could join in believing in. Right now, it’s so important that everybody not shy away from what they believe in. The people that I work with, they have a lot of courage. They also stepped away from their field to be in this, and that takes a lot of courage, I thought.

BOND: Also, to actually be in a room hearing people say things that resonate with you, things that you don’t get to hear people say unless you’re in a room with them, you don’t get that from video. It doesn’t enter you in the same way and it doesn’t seem as affirming of your strategies on how to survive in this time. But to have it reinforced by other human beings is very powerful.

IMHOF: This whole piece is basically quotes. Like, Sihana, she says this rumble medley that we found on the internet. Her saying it, as a gay female person right now, is so different from where it comes from. It originated from a young boy that kind of has it all, wants it all, does it all. But she can say it with so much grace and power. 

BOND: That’s what I love about it. Why just repeat texts? Unless, in the repeating, you’re recreating the text? The only way you do that is in the context of how it’s being delivered. That brings new meaning through old ways of seeing things.

IMHOF: The phrase that Talia came up with is the most important sentence. It’s her saying, “If everything else fails, I have the power to die. I myself have the power to die.” She came up with this phrase. Then Devon said, “That means death.” And Talia said, “And that means everything else fails.”

BOND: Right, that rebellion.

IMHOF: It was so cool to see them do this. The creative process together created these powerful images. I could have never thought about those images by myself or created all those by myself. I can make it into one image, and maybe that’s my strength. But this creative process and the brilliance of all of these people together, that’s what makes what it is right now— a doom and hopeful ball.