Drifting from classical ballet to burned-out bodies, from angel numbers to the mechanics of trust, dancer Adam Russell-Jones and musician Moritz Haas – aka Europa – share how their collaboration became Release the Hounds: a piece about class, crisis, and collapse. But also about something more elusive to name – the space where sound and movement orbit each other, colliding only to be built again.

Moritz: At an album release of a mutual friend in Amsterdam. I’d produced a couple of tracks, and Adam was there.
Adam: We had a short conversation outside. I told him I was working on a piece as William Blake.
M: I happened to be reading Blake’s poetry. Adam got in touch again about a sound score.
A: I already knew of his project Europa, but that moment I felt a sense of synchronicity—I could trust his references.
M: The smallest things can tell you the most. In past projects, I was applying music to finished works. This was different. It felt like he acquired me.

M: Exactly. Moving to Berlin, I started seeing music as the base of a huge creative spectrum and any collaboration. With this project, I was developing my own practice through the process.

M: We dug into past music – listening without the urge to use or enjoy it. Just feeling the texture, the tissue of emotion in sound, and understanding different ways of transporting emotion.

M: I sample a lot, but never so raw like this before. Putting old songs in context with each other to create something new.

A: For me, it marked a closure of past feelings towards my relationship with dance – something I deeply love but that’s also been incredibly challenging.

A: The culmination of themes brewing for years: exhaustion, excess, overdrive, burnout… And towards something both autonomous and collaborative. Growing up in a ballet school, your career is to end up as one of the principal dancers who plays the Prince. You’re trained to see yourself in certain roles.

A: Exactly. And while those roles have been performed greatly over and over again, I realized I wanted something new.
M: Still, there’s something prince-like in Release the Hounds – you’re alone on stage, facing yourself.
A: It’s ingrained. From a young age, you’re told that’s what you should want.
M: But who is the Prince, really? Someone trapped? Rich? Switched at birth? There are so many narratives about princes.
A: They’re always deeply confused.

A: It’s still a process. Three years ago, I went through two burnouts and had to stop. That led to a full year of recovery, I didn’t think I’d return.

A: I realized I still had something to say. I’ve devoted my entire life to this art form – I can’t abandon it. It needs to be a part of what I do, of a more entire artistic self now.

M: Strange, repeating sensations. Like a smell pulling you into a memory you’re not sure you even have.
A: A sense of nostalgia.
M: More than that, anemoia? Like my connection to Czech forests. Never been, but I can feel this ancient and beautiful energy.
A: Same with the Schwarzwald. I lived near it but never visited – still felt this pull.
M: Music does this a lot too. And it’s beautiful… without it, I’m not sure I’d keep making music – or want to live anymore, honestly.

A: Angel numbers follow me constantly – 11:11, 555… I don’t get it fully, but a friend into numerology shares meanings.

A: I suppose it’s about finding comfort in the unknown, and I appreciate the support.

A: I have a really sweet tooth – Candy, candy, candy – more and more. But we weren’t often in the same room.
M: Both parts evolved independently.
A: If I work with someone, is because I trust them. Space and time to reflect matter.
M: Despite moments of interference, in the end, a lot happens by coincidence rather than strict planning.

A: I had a playlist that set the mood, but the final run-through edit came just two days before.
M: When things are too tied, they won’t move freely. If dance is too synced to the rhythm or the sound, it becomes a question: is the dancer moving to the music, or the other way around?

A: I like this way of working, where not everything needs to be known and I can still be surprised on stage. And I still am.

A: Pina Bausch. Her company toured London while I was in school. A five-hour piece – I couldn’t leave. It shifted my entire perception of what theatre could do – I want to create what moves me in order to move others.
M: For me, it was a Bill Viola video installation – life, death cycles. I cried throughout. With music, it’s different because it happens often, moments where it changed my life.

M: Really big time? An Empty Bliss Beyond This World by The Caretaker. 60s swing songs—muffled, echoing—a conceptual album about Alzheimer’s. It hit deep.

A: Totally, I felt that.

M: No big story. I’ve played piano since age 5, electronic music for ten years. I liked its neutrality, and that is kind of abstract—there’s no strong male-female connotation.
A: Isn’t it a moon too?
M: And in Greek mythology, a woman abducted by Zeus disguised as a bull.
A: Classic Zeus.
M: But I didn’t choose it for that. I just liked the ambiguity – that people would project their meaning.

M: On the toilet. Where all great ideas are born.

M: At some point, I thought I wanted to add something extra… But you know what? No comments.