The Goldberg variations BWV 988

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to Bach, and performs in person. A dialogue with the works of the cantor has nourished her evolution since the beginning: in her words, performing this music comes down to “incarnating an abstraction”.  She employs her whole body, which carries within it one of the richest histories in contemporary dance.  

A relatively simple and slow theme, on the rhythm of a saraband, opens the collection of Goldberg variations, published in 1741. At the end of a breath-taking voyage, the theme is heard once again, almost identical and yet totally renewed by what has come before. To prepare for this return – conclusion and rebeginning – Bach deploys the theme in 30 variations, multiplying the forms and styles with mastery and sensitivity into one of the great monuments of music. Specialists love to explain the compositional refinements that constrain and structure the expressive diversity of each piece (to take a relatively simple example, not only is the succession of pieces organized by tonal progression, but each third variation starting with the fourth is composed as a canon, the first in unison, the second on the second interval, the third on the third interval, and so on, all the way to the 10th and final canon in variation 31, which follows the rule in spectacular fashion before returning to the initial theme). But you don’t need a degree in musicology to resonate to this art of controlled transformation, broken down into forms of a discipline that its creator freely imposed. And the same holds for the choreographic work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Her way of tracing a rigorous geometry in space, figure against figure, in echo to the variations, her quest by which the movement of an “immobile foyer” from the danced form radiates and is organized, allows the viewer to grasp immediately, intuitively: circles and spirals, rotations, diagonals passing through the formulas. Some might perhaps recognize a few citations, allusions to certain of her other works such as Achterland, Rosas danst Rosas or Drumming, considered major references in contemporary dance. Such memories are precious, but they are not necessary to appreciate Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, when she is engaged in the last of her solo works that she continues to perform herself. All we need do is grant our attention and the work constructs itself before our eyes. Here, she again plunges into the history of choreography, but this history is made of histories that conjugate with the singular present, linked as in a wreath with the live performance of a great artist.

Chorégraphie & danse Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Assistante chorégraphique Diane Madden
Décors & lumières Minna Tiikkainen
Piano Alain Franco

Johann Sebastian Bach
Les Variations Goldberg, BWV 988

Venus du monde entier, de jeunes danseurs talentueux choisissent P.A.R.T.S., l’école de danse de Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, pour réaliser leur rêve.   

Vous désirez aider un jeune talent à faire de son rêve une réalité ?
C’est possible. Il vous suffit de faire un don qui financera une bourse d’étude.  

Grâce à vous, le talent sera notre seul critère de sélection. Et cela fera toute la différence. 

Toute info pour faire un don via la Fondation Roi Baudoin, avec attestation fiscale :
www.parts.be/become-a-friend