The name's d'Eon. Chevalier d'Eon

He was an 18th-century spy who loved to cross-dress and swordfight. Who better to stage his life than Sylvie Guillem, Alexander McQueen, Russell Maliphant and Robert Lepage? They tell Judith Mackrell how they pulled it off
Russell  Maliphant as d&#8217;Eon in a McQueen creation
'A bit crazy' ... Russell Maliphant as d'Eon in a McQueen creation Photograph: Erick Labbe Erick Labbe/Guardian

For a long time now, the actor and experimental theatre director Robert Lepage has been fascinated by the life of the Chevalier d'Eon, an 18th-century French soldier who had a flamboyant career as a diplomat and secret agent for Louis XV, and spent much of his adult life dressed as a woman. Officially, the Chevalier's skirts were worn as a professional disguise: his exceptionally fine features allowed him to pass easily for a woman, and thus move around undetected as a spy. But the Chevalier didn't just do it for the job. He was a genuine cross-dresser, an 18th-century transvestite.

Lepage's fascination has now led to Eonnagata, a daring collaboration inspired by the life of the Chevalier that gets its British premiere next week. The work has been put together by four very different, and internationally acclaimed, artists: there's Lepage, the choreographer Russell Maliphant, the dancer Sylvie Guillem and the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. That's quite a team - and the result is a unique hybrid of their art forms. How would they describe it? Maliphant gives it a go: "It's not pure dance: it doesn't have Sylvie doing splits or amazing falls. But it's not pure theatre, either."

Just over two years ago, Maliphant and Guillem were considering what their next project might be. They had been working together on and off since 2001, most famously in their 2005 duet Push. They had developed a resonant chemistry on stage: Guillem classically trained and elegant, Maliphant more recklessly physical. The two began to think about bringing another artist into the mix and Maliphant mentioned Robert Lepage. A few months later, when Guillem was in Sydney, she caught Lepage's solo show The Andersen Project, a lyrical piece inspired by the life of Hans Christian Andersen.

Guillem is normally shy of approaching fellow performers, but she was entranced by Lepage and his ability to conjure Andersen's world with props, video and text. "I was mesmerised," she says. "I felt I must speak to him. Robert had this genius eye for theatre, this ability to say things in a way that was very clear, very clever, always unexpected but always true." She went backstage and told him: "If by chance you need a dancer, I'm here."

The next time Guillem, Lepage and Maliphant all happened to be in London, she arranged for them to meet. Finding a free day was hard enough; clarifying their ideas proved even more challenging. For a start, says Lepage, he had misunderstood what Guillem meant. "I'd got the idea that Sylvie wanted me to devise or direct a piece of dance theatre for her. I hadn't understood that she intended me to be on stage with her and Russell." By the time he realised the nature of the project, "it was the third or fourth meeting and it was too late to pull out".

But if Lepage felt daunted by the idea of dancing with the world's most famous ballerina, he wasn't going to let it hold him back. He came up with a story he felt would suit the collaboration. Typically, it was far from simple. Lepage was fascinated not only by the Chevalier's sexual ambivalence, but also by the ways in which his life paralleled the world of the onnagata, the male actor in Japanese kabuki theatre, who is trained to perform female roles.

Lepage saw elements of androgyny in Guillem and Maliphant that he believed would fit the work: "Sylvie is so strong and athletic. There is a very masculine quality about her energy, while Russell has this softness about him." The trio decided that all three of them would play the Chevalier: Maliphant representing his younger self, Sylvie his middle years, and Lepage the final period, after he had been disgraced at court and ended up in London, living off society women and his own earnings as an exhibition swordfighter.

The three wanted Eonnagata to be a collaboration at every level: if Guillem wanted to speak, Lepage to choreograph and Maliphant to swordfight, then they were all free to do so. "For Sylvie and Russell," says Lepage of the first rehearsals, "the most exciting moments were often when they were using text. It was such a liberation for them to be speaking words. For me, the most exhilarating moments were letting go of the text and trying to let the costumes, props and dance tell the story."

As their improvised material began to take shape, certain conflicts threatened. Lepage, naturally enough, took the lead in creating a narrative. "Right away," Guillem says, "Robert could see the story. He could build the details so it would all start to make sense." Yet Maliphant, unused to telling stories or creating character on stage, felt pressured by the demands of the emerging plot: "There was a different energy involved, a different sense of time, which meant I couldn't go into the dance material as deeply as I wanted." Maliphant felt the rehearsals were moving too fast; Lepage was flummoxed by their slowness. "I didn't know that to understand things physically," says Lepage, "dancers have to repeat them over and over. I kept wanting to get on to the next scene."

Then there were the costumes. It was Guillem who first suggested Alexander McQueen, citing his "elegance, refinement and talent to be a bit crazy". McQueen, who had spurned previous offers to work in theatre, even from such hallowed institutions as the Paris Opera, jumped at the invitation, inspired by the story and by the chance to dress Guillem.

"This male-female character was so up my strasse," McQueen says. "I'm interested in the dark psychosis of his mind. There's a melancholy there, especially after he was exiled and became the puppet of the ladies who lunch." He cackles. "I know what that feels like."

McQueen had one condition, though: "I wanted to bring my own mind to this collaboration. Otherwise, they didn't need me - they needed a costume department."

When the performers received their prototype costumes, they discovered just how creative McQueen's input would be. He had conceived the outfits in two layers. The bottom was a flesh-coloured unitard, to be worn by all three performers. Two had some mischievous extra padding: Maliphant's around the hips, Guillem's "a little bit of something between the legs". Over these, McQueen had designed extravagant, gender-crossing fantasies, referencing Louis XV, kabuki and 21st-century couture. They included an elaborate military jacket, embroidered kimonos and a "petticoat cage" (a hooped underskirt normally worn under crinolines). They were gorgeous - but the performers worried about damaging them. "Alexander's designs are usually worn on the catwalk," says Lepage. "We are wearing these every day, sweating and stretching and falling on our knees."

Maliphant also felt constricted by them. Used to dancing in little more than sweatpants and T-shirt, he was tripping over his skirts and finding it difficult to move in his jacket. "At first I thought it was hopeless," he says, "and there was no use trying to battle with them." But he could see the magic of McQueen's creations. "They moved so beautifully. They were really sculptural and the fabric was so good."

Maliphant was still getting the hang of the costumes when Eonnagata had its first preview performance in Québec City, Lepage's home, in December 2008. The Québec audience - used to getting a first sight of Lepage's works in progress - were unfazed by the show's extravagant mix of modern dance, kabuki, theatre and swordfights. But backstage, things were chaotic. "It felt like a fashion show, with a costume change every two minutes," Maliphant says. "I never got to put on my padding."

But if the birth of Eonnagata has been complicated, it has nonetheless been conceived with love. For Maliphant, the joy of it has been "creating a shared aesthetic", while for Lepage it has been "an opportunity for playfulness, discovery and bliss". McQueen, for his part, is so keyed up that he will be "watching the first night from the back of the stands".

For Guillem, its driving force, Eonnagata marks a crucial stage in her mission to reinvent herself as a dancer. She turns 44 this Monday and has said goodbye to the tutus and pointe shoes of her ballerina career. What more fascinating route to reinvention could there be than this?