FASE
SYDNEY FESTIVAL AND SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENT
FOUR MOVEMENTS TO THE MUSIC OF STEVE REICH ROSAS | BELGIUM | AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE CHOREOGRAPHED AND DANCED BY ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER
FREE PROGRAM PROUDLY MADE POSSIBLE BY
SYDNEY FESTIVAL AND SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENT
FASE, FOUR MOVEMENTS TO THE MUSIC OF STEVE REICH ROSAS | BELGIUM | AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE CHOREOGRAPHED AND DANCED BY ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE 9 –11 JANUARY 70MINS NO INTERVAL
CHOREOGRAPHY
COSTUMES
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
1981: Martine André, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
DANCED BY
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Tale Dolven CREATED WITH
Michèle Anne De Mey (Piano Phase & Clapping Music), Jennifer Everhard (Come Out) MUSIC
Steve Reich - Piano Phase (1967) - Come Out (1966) - Violin Phase (1967) - Clapping Music (1972) LIGHT DESIGN
Remon Fromont (Piano Phase & Clapping Music) Mark Schwentner (Violin Phase & Come Out)
ARTISTIC COORDINATION & PLANNING
Anne Van Aerschot TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT
Joris Erven TECHNICIANS
Wannes De Rydt, Michael Smets WORLD PREMIERE
18 March 1982 Beursschouwburg Brussels PRODUCTION 1982
Schaamte vzw Brussels Avila vzw Brussels CO-PRODUCTION EARLY WORKS
Sadler’s Wells London, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg
ABOUT THE WORK When she returned from New York, De Keersmaeker created Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, which opened in the Beursschouwburg in Brussels in 1982. This production exploded onto the scene and is still considered to have been the starting point of the contemporary dance movement that developed in Flanders during the eighties. Fase was danced by De Keersmaeker herself and Michèle Anne De Mey, another ex-student of the Mudra school. This performance was revived with these two original dancers at the Théâtre Varia in Brussels in 1992. The musical basis of the choreography consisted of four minimalist works by the American composer Steve Reich, all written between 1966 and 1972: Piano Phase, Come Out, Violin Phase and Clapping Music. De Keersmaeker had already choreographed the dance solo for Violin Phase while in New York. It was created in collaboration with the members of the Steve Reich and Musicians ensemble, and was performed for the first time in 1981, during the Festival of the Early Years in Purchase. Fase is a choreographic entity, and as such is more than simply the sum of its four parts. The choice of movements, the division of space, the lighting and other elements formed part of the deliberate construction of the complete dramaturgy that encompassed all four parts. This pursuit of choreographic unity is also visible in the well thought-out use of several basic motifs: in the dancing in Piano Phase the straight line is alternated with the circle (the dancers turn on their own axis); in Come Out the dancers also trace out circles, but are here confined to the chairs they are sitting on; in the solo Violin Phase, the whole stage is used and is cleft by circular and diagonal lines; in Clapping Music the straight line again dominates. Characteristic of these movements divided into four parts is their division into short sequences that are incessantly repeated and which gradually change by way of small shifts. One might say that in compiling her vocabulary of movement, De Keersmaeker initially expressed herself in short sentences. Simple phrases were, in the course of repetition, varied and recombined and thereby forged into longer units. In Fase, which is often called minimalist, the language is mainly abstract: there is no story, and the performers do not refer to any characters.
All photos: Herman Sorgeloos
In Fase, De Keersmaeker marked out a major direction for her later work, one which was closely concerned with the specific relationship between music and dance. Even though her language of movement was to evolve thoroughly over time, in creating a choreography De Keersmaeker was always to start from an in-depth analysis of the musical score. In this process the first condition was that the dance should never illustrate the music. It was rather that the choreography served to articulate certain basic principles of composition used in a way that was independent and autonomous. More particularly, De Keersmaeker aspires to an analogous relationship between dance and music. She usually finds the foundations for this in the structure of the music, which is then taken up in the choreography. This transposition may primarily involve the use of the space, the temporal sequence of movements, or the movements themselves. In Violin Phase, for instance, a circular structure is closely linked to the fact that this composition is based on the rondo (use of space). The percussive use of the piano in Piano Phase is reflected choreographically in short and angular gestures (movements). And at a more general level each of the four parts of Fase keeps to the principle of gradual phasing that is also characteristic of Steve Reich’s minimalist music: movements which are originally carried out in perfect synchronisation, although apparently constantly repeated, are gradually shifted and offset (temporal composition). This type of structural analogy between dance and music has become the trade mark of De Keersmaeker’s choreography. Especially in the productions whose titles even refer to the music used, the choreographic handwriting (a term De Keersmaeker often uses in interviews and conversations) enters into a literally structural dialogue with the musical score. MARIANNE VAN KERKHOVEN AND RUDI LAERMANS
ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER In 1980, after studying dance at Mudra School in Brussels and Tisch School of the Arts in New York, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (b. 1960) created Asch, her first choreographic work. Two years later came the premiere of Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. De Keersmaeker established the dance company Rosas in Brussels in 1983, while creating the work Rosas danst Rosas. Since these breakthrough pieces, her choreography has been grounded in a rigorous and prolific exploration of the relationship between dance and music. She has created with Rosas a wide-ranging body of work engaging the musical structures and scores of several periods, from early music to contemporary and popular idioms. Her choreographic practice also draws formal principles from geometry, numerical patterns, the natural world, and social structures to offer a unique perspective on the body’s articulation in space and time. From 1992 until 2007, Rosas was in residence in the Brussels opera house De Munt/La Monnaie. During this period, De Keersmaeker directed a number of operas and large ensemble pieces that have since been performed by repertoire companies worldwide. In Drumming (1998) and Rain (2001), both with Ictus contemporary music ensemble, complex geometric structures in point and counterpoint, together with the minimal motivic music of Steve Reich, created compelling group choreographies that remain iconic and definitive of Rosas as a dance company. Also during her time at La Monnaie, De
Keersmaeker created Toccata (1993) to fugues and sonatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music has continued to be a recurring thread in her work. Verklärte Nacht (both the 1995 version for 14 dancers and the 2014 version for three) unfolded De Keersmaeker’s expressionist side, bringing the stormy narrative of Arnold Schönberg’s late romantic string sextet to life. She ventured into theatre, text, and interdisciplinary performance with I said I (1999), In real time (2000), Kassandra – speaking in twelve voices (2004), and D’un soir un jour (2006). She highlighted the use of improvisation within choreography in tandem with jazz and Indian music in such pieces as Bitches Brew / Tacoma Narrows (2003, to the music of Miles Davis), and Raga for the Rainy Season / A Love Supreme (2005). In 1995 De Keersmaeker established the school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels in association with De Munt/La Monnaie. De Keersmaeker’s latest pieces mark a visible ‘stripping down’ of her choreography to essential principles: spatial constraints of geometric pattern; bodily parameters of movement generation, from the utmost simplicity of walking to the fullest complexity of dancing; and close adherence to a score (musical or otherwise) for the choreographic writing. In 2013, De Keersmaeker returned to the music of Bach (performed live) in Partita 2, a duet between herself and Boris Charmatz. Also in 2013, she created Vortex Temporum to the spectral music piece of the same name written in 1996 by Gérard Grisey. Taking her penchant for
TALE DOLVEN writing movements from musical scores to an extreme level of sophistication, Vortex Temporum had a one-to-one ratio between the Rosas dancers and the live Ictus musicians, bringing the choreography and the music into meticulous dialogue. In 2015 this piece was adapted to a durational exhibition format at WIELS in Brussels under the title Work/ Travail/Arbeid. Also in 2015, Rosas premiered Golden Hours (As you like it), using for the first time a body of text (Shakespeare’s As You Like It) as the score for movement, thus allowing the music (Brian Eno’s 1975 album Another Green World) to recede from strict framework to soft environment. Later that year, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continued her research into the relationship between text and movement in Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, a creation based on the eponymous text by Rainer Maria Rilke. In A Choreographer’s Score, a three-volume monograph published by Rosas and Mercatorfonds, De Keersmaeker offers the performance theorist and musicologist Bojana Cvejić wide-ranging insights into the making of four early works as well as Drumming, Rain, En Atendant (2010), and Cesena (2011).
Tale Dolven was born in 1981 in Stavanger, Norway. She studied at KHIO in Oslo and at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. In Norway she danced Asking for...?, a solo made for her by Norwegian choreographer Soelvi Edvardsen. After her studies she danced in Charlotte Vanden Eynde’s Beginnings. Endings., and choreographed and performed her own piece Gone. Before joining Rosas for D’un soir un jour, she took over one of the roles in the Raga for the Rainy Season. Tale has danced in Bartok / Beethoven / Schoenberg – Repertory Evening, Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, Steve Reich Evening, Zeitung and all of the Early Works, including Rosas danst Rosas and Elena’s Aria. Whilst freelancing for Rosas in recent years, she has worked at Frank Vercruyssen/TG STAN in Nusch, as well as dancing with Benjamin Vandewalle, Doris Uhlich and Kris Verdonck. She is currently establishing a collaborative work with actor Gabel Eiben.
ALSO BY ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER & ROSAS
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