Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Drumming Live
© © Anne Van Aerschot ©
© © Anne Van Aerschot ©
© © Anne Van Aerschot ©
© © Anne Van Aerschot ©
© © Anne Van Aerschot ©
Choreography, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
With 12 dancers from the Rosas company
Music, Steve Reich, Drumming
Musical direction, Gerrit Nulens
Performed by Ensemble Ictus and Synergy Vocals
Stage, decor and lighting design, Jan Versweyveld
Costumes, Dries Van Noten
Produced by Rosas ; La Monnaie / De Munt (Brussells) ; and La Bâtie – Festival de Genève
Coproduced by La Monnaie / De Munt (Brussells) ; Sadler’s Wells (London) ; and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
In association with La Villette (Paris) ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Rosas receives support from the Commission Communautaire Flamande (Vlaamse Gemeenschap) and the Communauté Flamande.
With the support of Adami
First performed on the 7th August 1998 at Sofiensäle (Vienna) as part of ImPulsTanz (Vienna)
In 1998, fifteen years after her inaugural work, Fase, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returned to the music of Steve Reich in order to initiate a redeployment of her composition principles. Set to the entrancing, percussion-based rhythm of Drumming, she brings to the stage a work whose formal purity and geometrical construction overturns perception.
Certain composers occupy a unique place in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s intimate relationship with music. This is the case with Bach, the counterpoint of which has been the driving force behind her steps for several years. The same can be said for the music of Steve Reich, the repetitive structures of which enabled her to elaborate on the fundaments of her vocabulary with Fase, in 1982. In 1998, in her quest to write a choral work that put her choreographic principles to the test of a group of twelve dancers, she turned to the rhythmical rigour of Drumming. In line with how Reich’s work develops – from pared-down minimalism to an enlargement of sound textures and compositional mechanisms – she draws upon all the resources of the body, space and time. Starting off from a single phrase, Drumming combines canons, phrases, which are mirrored, inverted and pushed out of joint. The ensuing choreographic palette seems an unlimited one - sculpted according to the measures produced by the golden ratio, together with interplay with the percussion motifs. Whilst Drumming overwhelms us with the diversity of its combinations, the piece never foregoes the possibility of understanding, or of following the architecture of the movement as the dancers relay each other. Accompanied onstage by the Ictus ensemble, Drumming Live affirms the interdependent nature of the relationship between the different senses - sight, perception and hearing - whilst enabling us to experience, at the same time, structure as it takes form.
See also
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Radouan Mriziga / Rosas, A7LA5 Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione
In collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Radouan Mriziga, the challenge taken up by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is to make Vivaldi's Four Seasons heard, using the tools of dance to hone the way we listen to this baroque masterpiece. Under the auspices of abstraction, the resulting alliance reconnects with the imaginary ecological world that is conjured up by this famous concerto.
Rabih Mroué, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker A little bit of the moon
As part of a special invitation by the Festival d'Automne, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and director Rabih Mroué shared, over the course of ten months, their thoughts, concerns, doubts, and questions regarding politics, art and life. After numerous exchanges by videoconference, the two artists now come together on the site of the former industrial complex, the new home of the Fiminco Foundation. Together, for the duration of a performance, they will be drawing up the plans for a new world for all.
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Sorour Darabi, DEEPDAWN One Thousand and One Nights
Sorour Darabi, the Iranian choreographer, who has been living in France since 2013, unveils his first opera, an ambulatory performance which enables voices marginalized by ancient myths to be heard. It is a piece devised by and for committed bodies.
Carolina Bianchi y Cara de Cavalo Trilogie Cadela Força – Chapitre I : A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela
Like descending into the darkest depths of hell, Carolina Bianchi exposes the unspeakable horror of sexist violence, plunging us into a median space in which all memory becomes blurred. Following in the footsteps of the artist Pippa Bacca, she uses her own body for the purposes of the piece, thereby anchoring herself in the history of feminist performance, and casting a critical gaze upon it at the same time.
Théo Mercier Skinless
Brought to the stage by visual artist Théo Mercier, Skinless is a disenchanted Eden built on a landscape of rubbish. Amidst this XXL end-of-the-world panorama, an out of the ordinary couple loves and tears each other apart under the watchful eye of a tragic observer.
Romeo Castellucci, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustav Mahler Symphonie No. 2 “Résurrection” With the Paris Orchestra
Directed by Romeo Castellucci, Gustav Mahler's Resurrection symphony seems to take on all its tragic grandeur. Masterfully conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Italian director magnifies this monumental work in order bring us a funereal “song of the earth” from which nobody emerges unscathed.
Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon Canine Jaunâtre 3
Following on from the Portrait dedicated to her by the Autumn Festival two years ago, Marlene Monteiro Freitas hijacks the match: twenty-five virtuoso performers, each wearing the same number 3 vests, throw the score into disarray, measure themselves against the grotesque and warp the game. This show sees the eccentric choreographer passing on to the Lyon Opera Ballet a jousting match of hybrid times, a carnivalesque fresco in which the human, animal and machine have a tendency to merge.