De Munt rounded off its dance programme for the 2018-19 season with a performance by Rosas at the Kaaitheater. The programme featured a repertoire evening with Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg: three early works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, each inspired by a classical composition. For the occasion there was also live musical accompaniment. Musicians from Ictus provided accompaniment for Bartók and Beethoven, and orchestra members from Brussels Philharmonic under the direction of Alain Franco for Schönberg.
Quatuor n° 4 from 1986 is the oldest choreography, but shows not a single sign of age. On the contrary. This piece for four dancers takes you back to the early period of Rosas; to the wondering and captivated watching of four skipping girls in their black, swirling skirts and black ankle boots. And then there were those white knickers that occasionally played a part in this playful, combative choreography set to Bartók's complex rhythms and harmonies. You remember the graceful little jumps, that wink now and then, that strictness in the movements that make the whole thing so complex and captivating. The members of the original casts, who guided newcomers through the staging, must have made that clear.
In Die Grosse Fuge, a choreography created in 1992, the tone is completely different. Now only men dressed in black are on stage. They move to the notes of Beethoven's Große Fuge mostly individually in De Keersmaeker's search for a masculine vocabulary. There are confrontations. Gravity is apparently being challenged in a choreography that attempts to translate the ingenious counterpoint of the German composer. It is not a very accessible work, demanding much from both dancers and audience.
For Verklärte Nacht by Arnold Schönberg, the four excellent musicians from Ictus, who had been performing on stage throughout, gave way to their string colleagues from Brussels Philharmonic. They settled into the narrow orchestra pit. This gave the two dancers the entire empty, bare stage to perform the new version of the choreography from 1995. Verklärte Nacht, based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, tells the story of two people in love. But the couple is confronted with the fact that the woman is expecting a child by another man whom she has never loved. Ultimately, they decide to accept the child as their own. In her version, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker allows the woman especially to have her say and to express her guilt feelings. The man remains aloof for a long time. But then he too is allowed to express his inner conflict. Ultimately, reconciliation comes in a duet. The dancing was excellent, but regrettably the piece as a whole conveyed very little emotion.
- WHAT: Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg
- WHO: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (choreography), Rosas (dance), Ictus and Brussels Philharmonic conducted by Alain Franco (music)
- WHERE: Kaaitheater, Brussels
- WHEN: Wednesday 19 June 2019
- PHOTOS: © Anne Van Aerschot