The fact that you ask specific questions can be regarded as provocation.

To provoke is not my primary intention. Sometimes in our work we manage to draw attention to an important societal phenomenon even before it resonates with the wider society. That was the case with Kirero which dealt with fascist tendencies in Europe (we put a Swastika in the flag of the European Union). The population only began to radicalise some 6 months later. In our latest show there is a commentary which speaks of the inner fragility of Europe which stems from its current disunity. We Europeans like to think that the European Union is intellectually and culturally strong, but people on the outside view us as very vulnerable. We tried to highlight this conflict in the show. I also think that countries like Slovakia, Poland or Russia have different cultural roots than Western European countries, and we therefore have a lot to learn from each other. We often look toward the West and we view Avignon, Impuls Tanz or other German festivals as benchmarks because the governments of those countries pour a lot of money into art. That, however, does not necessarily make the art any better.

Maybe we lack the confidence because we have lived through an era when art could not develop freely.

Perhaps, but I think we're just different. We're more emotional, which some Western Europeans don't seem to understand. I don't think Western Europe should culturally colonise the rest of the continent. When I do art, I just do it. I don't talk about it like people in the conceptual disciplines do. I don't comment on art or existing structures. I thrust my body into theatrical action, which is designed to communicate something. Let the viewers criticise me afterwards.

You say you don't see yourself as a director or a choreographer. How do you see yourself?

At school I already understood that I didn't want to limit myself to a single language, because I wanted to communicate. At that time my priority was to learn and to travel, and dance was a means of doing that because as a dancer I got jobs wherever I wanted. I was very fortunate in that regard. Thanks to dance I got to know the world and meet people, but I never devoted the whole of my energies to it. I also delve in movement research and the challenge of creativity in general. I like to use different means of communication. Sometimes I use theatre, other times I use choreography, lectures, workshops and research. And sometimes I'm idle. I feel that when a person only focuses on one thing and they stick with it, they can lose their mobility. If your only source of income is teaching, you have no other choice but to adapt your methods to the needs of your students so that you have enough of them to support your livelihood, but your outlook is somehow corrupted in the process. I do a great many things, which is why I sometimes feel like a choreographer, sometimes like an actor, sometimes like a pedagogue, and most of the time, like a father. I also feel like a student because I constantly work to better myself. I study so that I can lecture at universities, and I also attend lectures and take private lessons in martial arts. I strive to cultivate my knowledge and test it in different areas, and I feel that it gives me great flexibility.

Your ensemble has become very popular and many people are now looking to work with you. How do you coordinate people who often come from different parts of the world into a functioning group?

We don't have a permanent ensemble. Ever since 2009 there has been no reliable state support for the arts in Greece. We would love to work with a stable group of performers because that allows you to go more in depth, but at the moment it's just not possible. So we usually look for people who fit a given theme. We build on our experience and intuition. When we start a project we more or less know what we want to say. Normally when we start working we already have an idea about the script and do not let the dancers improvise. We focus on the theme from the very beginning of the show. We were very lucky to be able to put together Collective Loss of Memory in just two and a half weeks.

You mean you were lucky that the performers were able to sync with each other?

I mean we were lucky to put together a good show in such a short time. I think most of the time we can get people in sync – we have a lot of experience with teaching and communication and we enjoy working with people. But of course there have been some cases when we could not get a group in sync. There was a project we did in Switzerland where the performers were just lazy – the way we work is very demanding, both physically and mentally. But that only happens when we don't pick the people ourselves, or when we work with a group where the people already have steady incomes so they aren’t working because they have to.

Why does your method involve such great mental and physical strain? What are the benefits of that?

It is true that we push our dancers to the limit, but they receive a lot of love, too. It's as though they were in a constant embrace. They know that whatever they offer will be accepted. We may be tough on them, but we're not harsh. There's rarely any sign of conflict in our creative process. The dancers work a lot, but we are generous toward them. We make sure they have a place to stay and enough food to eat. We try to strike a balance – they give to us and we give back; they depend on us and we depend on them. We make sure the dancers know just how much we appreciate their work. Dance is an underestimated art form, which is why we appreciate it when young people are willing to work so hard for so little money.

Would you say this approach allows your dancers to 'go deeper' and fully devote themselves to the creative process?

We're not tyrants. Some directors like to use coercion to get the performers where they want them, but in the end only the director wins. We're not looking to coerce anyone. We give the dancers daily instruction where we work with them the way we would in a private lesson. In a sense they become part of our family. Rootlessroot never do anything that isn't us. We don't depend on festival directors or tour producers. We'll be fine whether we have four shows a year or a hundred and forty. What we're interested in is human potential and trust, the determination to do something that's more theatre than art, as well as authenticity and love for what you are doing. We take an equal interest in the performers, the viewers and ourselves.

You distinguish between art and theatre, which I find interesting. You also used the word 'authenticity'. Do you believe that art is about pretence?

I feel that contemporary art often lacks substance, and we are losing our audiences as a result of that. One festival director tries to show he's different from and better than another festival director. We, the artists, look to the directors and curators with great respect because we assume they somehow know more about the craft, but meanwhile they make as many mistakes as we do. I don't want to be in a situation where I have to meet with them and plead for a chance to perform. This, I believe, is the source of inauthenticity in art. But make no mistake, I'm not saying this out of spite. We perform quite a bit – we've had more than 500 shows in the past 5 years, so I've no reason to complain. But we don't have an office or someone who is sitting at a desk sending emails or taking calls. We work on the basis of gentlemen's agreements. Linda did thirty shows as part of her European tour. All that happened without us ever having to pick up the phone.

How is that possible?

There was always someone who had seen the show and wanted to take it forward.

So you don't do planned tours in the strictest sense of the word?

Naturally I would love to do a big planned tour like the famous ensembles do. We are relatively well-known, but we don't do the tours that the ensembles from Belgium or Germany do, because no-one will come and see you in Greece. It's a forgotten land as far as the promoters are concerned. But I have gone on record saying that I would like greater exposure. But think of it this way; is it true that when you have more shows, they are better? It certainly isn't. The fact is as an artist you have a natural inclination to share your world with as many people as possible. Whether you manage to do that is not entirely within your control. But if you are authentic, you have no other option. And if you don't want to be authentic, you have other options; you can either quit or you can fight for having as many people see you as possible.

Can you tell us more about the Fighting Monkey training method?

It's a kind of freestyle exercise where we utilise existing training methods and experience. That is to say, we don't 'own' any particular method, but the way of combining different methods and bringing them to life is our own. We also do our own research by openly discussing the sources we build on, much like in academia, where it's also necessary to name your sources. We consider it very important ethically that the people who take issue with our method be able to follow the sources however they please. The Fighting Monkey works with visible and invisible principles. We build on Cross Motion Analysis. We analyse motion patterns which are used in sport and dance and we attempt to find their common and distinguishing features. It is also important to appreciate the individual context of each person so that we can determine whether it's good or bad for them to do the exercises. We focus on the development of creativity, which in itself is nothing revolutionary, but our neuroplasticity development scheme rests on twenty years of scientific research, which shows that the human brain can develop throughout our entire lives – that it retains its plasticity. We also deal in new terminology. I feel that we have kind of entrenched ourselves in the 'body' and 'mind' dichotomy and we try to connect the body and the mind, but they are already connected. We try to simplify complex intellectual concepts so that people can understand them with ease. Our ambition is for Fighting Monkey to become a way that people can use to improve their quality of life. It's not just about art.

This type of movement is nonetheless very prevalent in your shows.

Of course. The body always moves in a certain style. When I devote all of my time to martial arts, it's difficult for me to move in any other way. Also with Linda you can always tell that she was a sports gymnast. The basis of this kind of movement is very primitive. We do not speculate about the aesthetics; on the contrary, we attempt to simplify the aesthetic so that it becomes only a corollary of the authenticity of the movement.

The founding stone of your shows is communication, which you often complement with different materials. You then work with these materials on stage, so that they become part of the scenic design as well as the vehicles of motion. Meanwhile a type of movement develops which often involves physical interaction between the dancers. And sometimes that movement evolves into something we traditionally call 'variation'. I refer, for example, to the sequence on Earth in Collective Loss of Memory, which communicated a kind of unity of the male performers.

We sort of built on the critique of the dance tradition because we fit in all the clichés normally found in dance shows, including some extravagant acrobatic elements. We wanted the viewers to fall in love with our show but also to doubt the authenticity of what the dancers were doing because it was a kind of ham acting. Take the way we approached the topic of masculinity in the beginning. Over the course of the show hints of violence slowly accumulate, but given the light-heartedness of the performance, the viewers barely notice them. It is only at the end that they are surprised to find out that ordinary, decent people are capable of great violence in certain situations. The show is about how people become desensitised to violence if we allow it in small amounts. The whole thing was very well received, but some curators had a problem with the fact that we show footage of real violence at the end of the show. I think they ought to take greater issue with the fact that art is becoming so concrete that it rarely ever says anything anymore. When we perform in England, we need a legal permit that says we're not damaging the viewers' health. Yet if you go on the internet, violent videos are freely accessible to everyone. But to see violence in theatre is somehow different, dangerous. I am confident that theatre should be dangerous. Ancient drama was dangerous. Its purpose was for the viewer to undergo catharsis, during which something inside him moved or changed. Modern theatre does not have this power anymore because we don't want to offend anything or anyone. We are ashamed to say concrete things, we are ashamed to tell a story. Meanwhile we all use stories to teach our children and we also need them when we are older. The painter Francis Bacon once said that abstract art was just a temporary fashion boom. That sooner or later we would return to concrete expression. This is not to condemn abstract art as such because some abstract work can elicit a very strong emotional reaction and can even be edifying. I only want to point out that in performance art we have caught ourselves in a sort of trap where we claim that when we speak on stage we are doing movement research. I have never seen a sculptor stand before a lump of stone and say that he will not sculpt it but instead speak about it.

What projects do you have coming up?

We are currently preparing a show for the Czech ensemble Cirk La Putyka. It stars Rosta Novak and his father and tells the story of their family. The premiere is scheduled for September. We are also preparing Fighting Monkey workshop cycles in Brussels, Copenhagen, Barcelona and London. In the meantime we will be working with athletes on movement development.

Jozef Fruček studied acting at the Bratislava Academy of Performing Arts, where he completed his doctoral studies in 2002. Between 2002 and 2005 he was a member of Ultima Vez one of the world's leading modern dance companies, headed by Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. With Ultima Vez, Fruček starred in Blush (stage and film versions) and Sonic Boom. Between 2005 and 2006 he developed his own show for the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels. In 2006 he and Linda Kapetanea founded the group Rootlessroot as a vehicle for their own productions and teaching, as well as for researching the Fighting Monkey training method, which uses martial arts elements in educating dancers, actors and athletes. Fruček organises workshops at many major European dance schools and festivals. Between 2006 and 2011 he taught at the Athens State School of Dance and between 2012 and 2014 at the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Cracow. With Rootlessroot Fruček has produced a number shows that have enjoyed considerable international acclaim, including: Collective Loss Of Memory (created for the Czech ensemble Dot 504), Dolls (for Cirk La Putyka), W Memorabilia (Phaedra’s Laboratory), DESH (collaboration on a solo performance by Akram Khan), Kireru (a production for the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens), Eyes In The Colours Of The Rain, 100 Wounded Tears (for Dot 504), UNA (unknown negative activity), Holdin Fast. The only show by Fruček in Slovakia is From the side of a man/from the side of a woman, which he created for the Theatre of Studio of Dance in Banska Bystrica. (2013).