Dancer-choreographer-filmmaker Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, 55, has been a major force in the contemporary dance world for more than a quarter of a century, marching to the beat of her own drummer.
Or in her case, most often to the music of American composer Steve Reich, whose desire for minimalism matches de Keersmaeker’s own.
Her company Rosas, founded in 1983, is in Taipei this week, nine years after they awed National Theater audiences in their Taiwan premiere with Rain, created in 2001.
Photos Courtesy of Rosas and NTCH
The troupe has returned for the Taiwan International Festival of Arts (TIFA) with two older works, Rosas danst Rosas, which marked the founding of the all-women troupe and is one of de Keersmaeke’s signature works, and Drumming, which premiered six years later. The two works will give Taipei audiences a chance to see why de Keersmaeke became such a major force in contemporary European dance and why she remains one.
Given her prominence in the dance world, it is difficult to understand why tickets for the company’s three shows did not move as fast as those for last weekends’s performances by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch of Bausch’s Palermo, Palermo, which the National Theater Concert Hall said set a record for selling out for a run. Familiarity is the only explanation. This year’s TIFA shows were the sixth time that Bausch’s troupe has appeared in Taipei. Rosas is making just its second visit and there are still seats remaining at almost every price level for all three shows.
Rosas danst Rosas is being performed just once, tonight, while there will be two performances of Drumming, on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. There will be a pre-show talk in the theater lobby, in Mandarin, that begins 30 minutes before each show. Following Sunday’s matinee, there will be a post-show talk with some of the company members.
Photo Courtesy of Rosas and NTCH
Set to an industrial score by fellow Belgians Thierry de May and Peter Vermeersch, the 90-minute Rosas danst Rosas laid the groundwork for what has become de Keersmaeke’s style — tight structure, a minimalism that unashamedly declares that less is all you get, rhythmic musicality, patterns and synchronicity.
In it, four women, over the course of four blocks of time or movements, alternate between synchronization and de-synchronization, whether rolling over the floor, sitting in chairs crossing and uncrossing their legs, moving their heads in unison, or dancing about the stage. It is repetition ad nauseum, often propelled by a ticking beat, yet it has the power to entrance those willing to give it a chance.
The devil is in the details, the small shifts in patterns, the revelation of a face or a leg, the everyday ticks of a person. While one admires the dancers’ discipline, their ability to remember all the nuances of the choreography is even more amazing. While Rosas danst Rosas is often about the small movements in life, the hour-long Drumming is about dance with a capital “D.”
It is set to a score for percussion by the same name that Reich composed in 1970 and 1971 after a trip to Africa, performed by the Ictus Ensemble on instruments ranging from the bongos and marimbas to glockenspiels and human voices. Drumming is dynamic and stirring, riding along on a wave of sound.
It begins with just one dancer and grows to encompass more than a dozen women and men, as a solo swells into pairs, triples and then the full company as the dancers skip, leap, twirl and dart around the stage in every-shifting lines, weaving complex patterns, the playfulness of their actions belied by the split-second timing needed to avoid collisions. Reich’s rhythms repeat, magnify, die down, overlap, just as de Keersmaeke’s choreography does.
It is predictable and unpredictable in turns, but most of all it is a joyous combination of music and dance.
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