An evening with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at the Opéra National de Paris (2015)

On this repertory evening, Rosas brings together three early works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In 1986, De Keersmaeker first ventured into the terrain of contemporary classical music with Bartók's string quartet Quartet No. 4. In a choreography punctuated by both playful and combative accents, De Keersmaeker took on the task of distilling a dance score out of Bartók's complex rhythms and layered harmonies. In the Grosse Fuge (1992), De Keersmaeker sets out to find a male vocabulary, with Rosas’ dancers challenging gravity in a piece that sought to provide a physical translation of Beethoven's ingenious use of counterpoint. The final piece of the evening, Verklärte Nacht (1995), presents a shamelessly romantic love story, in which the contrasting feelings of a man and a woman are dissected and interpreted in an expressive duet based on Schönberg's eponymous musical score.