Quick Q&A: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.

Dutch National Ballet, Gothenburg Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, and Scapino Ballet Rotterdam are just a few of the companies Annabelle Lopez Ochoa has choreographed on. This month she premieres a work for BalletX in Philadelphia. Next month Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company includes a duet she made for Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk at Vail International Dance Festival. Trained at the Royal Ballet Academy of Antwerp, Ochoa, 35, embodies the current European aesthetic of blurring lines between modern and ballet. She recently spoke with Wendy Perron.

Tell me about what you're working on for BalletX. I'm going to make a piece to baroque music. As an inspiration I took some baroque paintings that show a lot of people but everyone has a purpose. I am interested in the constructed chaos.

It almost sounds like the crowd scenes that Michel Fokine did for Petrouchka. Yes! Exactly. Except he had like a hundred people on stage. I'll have nine.

Are there any particular painters that you're inspired by? I like Rembrandt and Guiseppe Arcimboldo, but that's not constructed chaos. Arcimboldo used to paint faces made out of fruit. Actually, Jiri Kylian made a piece a long time ago also on those paintings. So I had an idea about fruit. I always leave some kind of openness in the process. I want to be surprised by the dancers.

I saw your brilliant duet Before After at Fall for Dance in 2006. To me it had to do with ways the two dancers made connections with each other. I work a lot with actors and--though my pieces are becoming more and more abstract--I like to see dancers look at each other in the eyes. Though I use the abstract form, I tell them always a very definite story.

So in Before After what was the story you told them? It was biographical. It was about a relationship ending, and what happened the moment before. It's like the moment before you die, you see your whole life. At the end of the piece they are going to separate, but the viewer sees the beginning, the passion, the friction, and then the separation.

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And that was biographical in terms of your own experience? Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry! It's OK, because the composer is the person! That was our last "baby" together (laughs).

Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk are incredible dancers. How did you go about using their talents for this duet?

The first rehearsal was difficult because I'm used to being restricted by the technical skills. I focus on the qualities of the dancers, and those two dancers could do everything! They can jump, they're very grounded, they have great lines, and are very flexible, so I was like, "Oh my God, I can do everything]" When you have a lot of choice you don't know what to choose. The male role in classical dance is supportive to the female. But they were so equal, so that made this piece about becoming that one. They're going to perform it with Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company.

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Have you noticed a difference between dancers trained in Europe and dancers trained here in the U.S.? No, you'd have to ask that in a year because I'm going to do my first piece on an American company on BalletX in July. Then I do Pennsylvania Ballet in February and Luna Negra in Chicago.

I heard that you did a piece for eight women on a Turkish company. How did that go? Yes, it premiered in March with Ankara Modern Dance Theater. Some of the women had to take their tops off and there was a problem because the political aspect is changing a lot in Turkey. The Islamic religious party is getting power again so there was a lot of pressure on the directors. The newspaper called to ask if that was true, that they were going to see bras onstage. That was a big deal. So I fought a lot, and you still see two women for 30 seconds in a bra. It wasn't a scandal because it was well done and I didn't offend anybody. But that was a great experience, culturally, to work in an Islamic country.

What choreographers have influenced you? It's not really the choreographers that influence me; it's painters and theater-makers.

Do you have one favorite company that you like to work with? I like the diversity of dancers. Every time they get in front of me, they're like clay. If l would always have one type of dancer, maybe my pieces would look the same. I like also to work with actors. I'm very influenced by what I learn in the theater world, and I take that into my work as a choreographer.