He admires Assness because he''thinks big''and has an eye not only for design but for atmosphere.''He knows how to create a feeling and he's bold. We are having a battle over colour - I resist colour - so he pushes me. He's creative and inspiring and funny. We have a good laugh when we're both too exhausted to be serious.''

In person,Assness is frank,funny and enthusiastic. Dressed in cowboy chic with hipster glasses he has put on for the photo (''to look more interesting'',Bonachela quips),he's an affable and generous talker.

First,the surname,pronounced''Az-ness''. It must have been a killer at school.''I've been teased all my life,''he says.''I've been teased for being gay,for being artistic,and when I came to Australia,teased for being a wog. I had the hat-trick.''

Assness was born in East London,on the south-east coast of South Africa.''Assness is a Latvian-Jewish name. My grandmother was a babushka of the first order. But like a lot of eastern European Jews,they fled their homeland and they ended up in South Africa.''

His father grew up Jewish in South Africa. But his mother was from staunch Methodist stock. When they got married,both sides of the family''exploded'',Assness says.''I think part of the reason they married was to royally piss off their parents.''

Unhappy with the political situation in South Africa,the family moved to Newcastle when Assness was 11. His parents started a real estate business. Within six months,he had forgotten Afrikaans and started at Broadmeadow High,where he saw boys with long hair for the first time.

''I couldn't believe it;my brain exploded,''he says.''I was dressed in ironed clothes with my hair parted on the side. That's when the teasing started.

''It was traumatic and I wouldn't wish it on anyone,but it has made me really strong. I can take a lot of tension and pressure. All those years sheltering in the art room and library really shaped me. By the time I got to Sydney,I was ready.''

At 17,Assness wrote to every theatre company in Sydney asking for work as a stage designer. Kim Carpenter,at Nimrod,was the only one who replied and took him on as an unpaid intern. One day,the set painter forThe Oresteia called in sick when the company urgently needed a baked,cracked desert floor. Assness took it on. It was his first break.''The paint was disgusting and wouldn't wash off,''he says.''But I did it and they gave me a job for the princely sum of $150 a week.''

After a year,Assness left Nimrod to go to art school. It was a mistake,he says now.''It was great for me artistically but I really should have gone to NIDA. I found it very difficult to get theatre work after art school,so my career went in a different direction.''

From there,Assness found himself in the world of corporate events,boutique dinner parties and product launches,commanding huge fees (and riding a wave of excess) before the recession hit. His launch party for Baz Luhrmann'sMoulin Rouge! took place on the sound stage where the film was shot,with the space transformed into a ruby-red universe filled with twinkling lights and mirror balls. It is legendary in social circles. But the private parties for Luhrmann were even more so,Assness says.

''Those parties were some of the maddest,craziest things I've ever been asked to do,''he says,refusing to go into detail.''They were naughty and rambunctious. I don't know how we got away with them. Baz has an amazing mind,so to do a party for him has to be unlike anything else.''

He says his work got bigger and bigger because he never lost his love of theatre.''I got booked because I knew how to engage an audience. I know what it takes to delight people. I've been going to theatre and films and opera all my life,and reading Proust and looking at Rubens. It's all in my work.''

So,how does he delight people?

''I think people love anything en masse. Abundance. People love to feel saturated and overcome and that's what I hope to do with the Sydney Dance Company,''Assness says.''We all love a glitter drop;look at[theatre director] Benedict Andrews! We love it when stuff falls from the sky - glitter,confetti,stars,petals,snow - I've done it all. Audiences love to feel like it's all too much.''

He also knows audiences love to see people dance. He's always used dancers in his fashion shows and large-scale events,whether they are feather-clad ballerinas or men in top hats and tails.''A dance sequence in a fashion show is always going to work. You stick the dancers in Alex Perry gowns,whack on a snowstorm and it brings out the kid in people.''Assness has applied his theory of''super-abundance''to2 One Another.

''On every level this show will be too much,''he says.''I want people to come back and see a different show;they won't be able to take it all in the first time around. For me as a designer,my blank canvas is a stage with 16 of the most amazing bodies doing amazing things. That's as good as it gets for a creative person.''

Though they are tussling over colour and textures,Assness and Bonachela seem to find common ground easily.''I actually think Raf's minimal is a kind of abundance,''Assness says.''He is so focused on the choreography that his instinct is to ratchet everything else back to just a black floor. But there is nothing minimal about 16 dancers going hard on stage. It's my job to create an ambience that is seamless with the dance.''

Assness grins.''I'm really just a bit of a ratbag. I'm like a circus act. I just have to keep finding someone to pay for my dancing-bear act. People will laugh at this,but I really want to create art with nothing. I look at that drawing by da Vinci with just the red chalk. That's what I'd like to do. Create art from nothing. I've never managed it,''he says,laughing.''But I would like to be able to do that.''

2 One Another by Sydney Dance Company opens at Sydney Theatre on Tuesday.

Gatsby and me

Assness worked on the two opulent party scenes in Baz Luhrmann's coming filmThe Great Gatsby,collaborating closely with designer Catherine Martin.''Those massive parties are there to show this very lush life that Gatsby had before all his friends deserted him,''he says.''They are not just pretty parties;they drive the narrative. They are there to show the decadence of the period and the contrast with the Depression.''

He can't talk about the details but he will say he used''mega-abundance''in the scenes set in the enormous Gatsby mansion.''In the original Gatsby film it looks like they shot the two party scenes on the same day,when they are meant to be a month apart and are two very different events. I wanted to make it clear time had passed,so each party has a different personality. I worked my arse off for a month. I was utterly exhausted.''

EB