“Rosas’ choreographies are always the result of different interactions: between the gestural material proposed by each dancer and the artistic directives to which that material responds, between the overall project and the individual contribution…” Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the undisputed leader of Flemish contemporary dance, has traced one of the richest and most complex choreographic paths in Europe since 1980. Her feminine writing, as warm and passionate as it is rigorous in form, has developed from essential, minimal body work, which has reached a sophisticated complexity over the years. An energy that alternates restrained gestures with explosive dynamics and that feeds on spiraling tensions, constantly accumulating materials, incisive dissonances, sensational and repeated falls, characterizes the quality of De Keersmaeker’s writing, an author who combines research on the body with equally precise research on music. It is no coincidence that her works are often described as true “dance concerts”, in which the musical score is not just black accompanying material, but a key to the analysis of the mystery of interiority. Trained at Béjart’s Mudra in Brussels and at the Rish School of Arts in New York, De Keersmaeker, born in 1960, soon began to devote herself to choreography, creating in 1981 in New York the sound Violin Phase, the first nucleus of Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich. A duet danced in pairs with Michèle Anne De Mey, Fase debuted in Brussels in 1982, immediately projecting the young author into the international circuit of major dance festivals. Another year and De Keersmaeker, together with De Mey, Fumiyo Ikeda and Adriana Borriello, created a small jewel of contemporary European choreography: Rosas danst Rosas, on an original score by Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch. The work marks the debut of the Rosas company. The original nucleus will soon dissolve, with the departure of De Mey and Borriello, but Rosas will continue on its path, enriched over the years by numerous interpreters. Already in Rosas danst Rosas the terms on which De Keersmaeker's future research would develop were clear, from the contrasting tensions between structure and emotion, to the open study of multiple solutions of the relationship between music and choreography. From 1982 to 1990 important productions will be born, from Elena's Aria (1984) to Bartòk / Aantekeningen (1986) up to the overwhelming and provocative Achterland (1990), a sharp reflection on the female universe and the relationship between the sexes, danced to the Eight Studies for Piano by Györgi Lieti and the Three Sonatas for Solo Violin by Eugène Ysaye, performed live. Resident at the Théâtre de la Mannaie in Brussels since 1992, Anne Teresa has developed important projects over these six years for the destiny of her company and of contemporary dance in general. New and stimulating creations have been born: the film Rosa shot by Peter Greenaway in 1992, Toccata (1993) – a work in which Bach scores, performed live by the pianist Jos van Immerseel, dialogue with a quintet of dancers, made up of four women and a man in a cross between the geometric architecture of music and the fluidity of choreographic writing; ERTS – 1992 creation on Beethoven’s music reworked the following year according to a process of choreographic recreation open to the inventiveness of the new dancers involved in the operation: Woud – 1996 piece inspired by three emblematic compositions by Schönberg (Verklärte Nacht), Berg (Lyrische Suite) and Wagner (Wesendonck Lied Nr. 3 “Im Treibhaus”). De Keersmaeker has also revived, revised, reworked many works from the past, making Rosas a very strong company with its own repertoire. But not only that: in 1995 with Mannaie she founded P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios), a study centre that opens from dance to all the performing arts, born to fill the void left in Brussels after the dissolution of Mudra in 1988. Presented in Rovereto less than a month after its world debut at the Wiener Tanzwochen festival, Drumming is a creation for twelve performers, based on the complete score of the work of the same name by Steve Reich. De Keersmaeker had worked on the music of this protagonist of 1970s minimalism for the first time in Fase. A composition for percussion only, Drumming is written on the basis of rhythmic processes, initially simple, which gradually become more complex thanks to procedures of multiplication and superposition. On the basis of a strongly accentuated rhythmic pulse, Reich uses slippages, allowing the instruments to overlap in the same musical phrase and alternating sounds with silence. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker had already used the first movement of Drumming in Just Bifore, a creation from last year performed by the same twelve dancers involved in the new piece.
