Her choreography is fiercely cerebral and yet infused with a wrought, emotional energy. Her process is meticulous yet the language of her work is vibrant and immediate. Her dance is derived from abstraction while remaining undeniably theatrical, and while her work may be considered by some as uncompromisingly challenging, her place among the elite dance makers of the world is reflected in her global following. For over three decades these apparent contradictions have made Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker one of contemporary dance’s most fascinating artists, yet the Belgian choreographer doesn’t consider these juxtapositions in her work to be a paradox. “I don’t think they are ‘versus,’ I think they go together,” she tells me. “There is in one sense a more academic approach and understanding versus something more instinctive. But I think it is your intuition that marries both – that harmonises both.”

It is revealing that De Keersmaeker uses the vocabulary of music to describe her practice, since a deep musicological understanding has been an ever present impulse in her work. The two pieces coming to the Sydney Festival in January – De Keersmaeker’s 1982 exploration of the minimalism of Steve Reich, Fase, and one...