Bitef

the war atrocities committed in God’s name... “Action is the antidote to despair”, Baez said. “Living is my religion.” “That’s aU nonviolence is - organized love.” Or also: “You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live.” (Claire Diez) ROSAS & ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER In the early Eighties, when the artistic climate allowed dance to gain ever greater prominence, 20-year-old Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker presented her very first piece, Asch. A former pupil of MUDRA, the school founded by Maurice Béjart, she was to give an entirely new orientation to dance in Flanders. In 1981, she went to study at the New York Tisch School of the Arts, where she had first-hand contact with American post-modern dance. That influence was obvious in her second work, Ease, four movements to the music of Steve Reich, from 1982, which was extremely well received. In 1983, as a logical result, De Keersmaeker founded her own dance company, Rosas, which presented Rosas danst Rosas. Once again, the music - by Thierry De

Mey and Peter Vermeersch, composed in conjunction with the creation of the choreography - was the driving force behind the dance. That special relationship between dance and music was to become a constant in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s work. From Rosas danst Rosas on, De Keersmaeker’s activity has been consistent, yet always unexpected. During the first years she could count on the support of Hugo De Greef, the director of Kaaitheater in Brussels. Several extremely varied productions followed one another in quick succession: the elegant Elena’s Aria in 1984; Bartók/Aantekeningen in 1986; the play Verkommenes Ufer / Medeamaterial / Landschaft mit Argonauten in 1987 and, the same year, Mikrokosmos - Monument Selbstporträt mit Reich und Riley (und Chopin ist auch dabei) /In zartfliessender Bewegung-Quatuor Nr. 4. Ottone ; Ottone, from 1988, was her first dance production for a large stage. The taut lines of the preceding pieces gave way to a new aesthetic concept with a distinctly baroque feel. In 1990 De Keersmaeker created Stella, a ‘women’s piece’ in which her personal way of working with dancers reached a top. The same year Achterland was also presented. Its score, by Györgi Ligeti and Eugene Ysa'e, was performed live on stage. The musicians were visually integrated in the stenography and the dancers took their presence into account. A similar bond with the music was to be found in ERTS, from 1992, in which the use of videotapes was another important element. Moreover, because the music was played live, ERTS became a truly large-scale production. This can partly be explained by the fact that in 1992, on invitation of Bernard FoccrouEe, Rosas was to start its residency at the Belgian national opera La Monnaie Theatre in Brussels. In this new setting, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker set herself three goals: to intensify even more the link between dance and music, to estabhsh a repertoire, and to create a new dance school in Belgium, to fill the gap left by MUDRA’s disappearance from Brussels in 1988. By that time Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s work had received full recognition, nationaEy as weU as intemationaEy. In 1982 she was invited to premiere her Mozart/Concert Arias - Un Moto di Gioia in the famed „Cour d’Honneur“ of the Avignon Festival. The same year Peter Greenaway shot Rosa, a choreography specifically created for the screen, in the foyer of the Ghent Opera House. In 1993, the dance programme of the HoEand Festival was entirely dedicated to De Keersmaeker, with several revivals and the premiere of Toccata. Kinok, created in collaboration with Thierry De Mey and the Ictus ensemble, was presented at KunstenFESTWALdesArts in 1994, It was the forerunner of Amor constante mas alla de la muerte, a musically complex and virtuoso performed choreography chat premiered the same year. Amor Constante is a performance chat clearly marks the evolution in De Keersmaeker’s dance. Out of a dance vocabulaiy entirely designed to suit her own body the choreographer developed an idiom closely linked to specific performers. The strength of this dance lay in the association of a very personal, impetuous vocabulary and a particularly powerful structure. As the company expanded the choreographic language