(© Herman Sorgeloos)
A four-DVD box set has been released that presents the early days of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her Rosas dance company: Early Works offers a look at their early pieces and also takes us inside the rudimentary rehearsal rooms of the early 1980s.
Budding Rosas
DVD BOX | Early Works ●●●
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Cinéart, NL/FR/EN, 210 min.
Recently, the Film Festival Ghent premiered the film Rain, a documentary by the film-makers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes, who followed the rehearsal process and premiere of De Keersmaeker’s 2001 choreography of the same name, which was revived in 2011 by the Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris.
Meanwhile, Rosas and Cinéart have released a DVD box with films of the first four productions De Keersmaeker ever made with Rosas: the films that Thierry De Mey made of complete performances of Fase and Rosas danst Rosas, the documentary Répétitions, in which Marie André follows the story of how Elena’s Aria took shape, and Hoppla!, for which Wolfgang Kolb filmed the Béla Bartók pieces Mikrokosmos and Quartet No. 4 in, among other locations, the library of Ghent University. The box set is an indispensable and comprehensive visual record for anyone interested in seeing (again) the choreographies that created such a revolution at the time in the performing arts in Brussels and Belgium. It includes Thierry De Mey’s superb top-shot footage of the “Violin Phase” from Fase, in which you can see how De Keersmaeker, in the course of the choreography, draws a rosette in the sand.
At least as interesting are the many extras included on all four DVDs: episodes of the Dag aan dag and Het gerucht programmes broadcast by the notorious arts service of the then BRT (the predecessor of today’s VRT) in 1982, 1983, and 1986 and the lengthy Dutch TV (NOS) reportage Décalages/Verschuivingen, for which Ger Poppelaars came to Brussels in 1987. The fact that those reportages were made back then tells you something about the (international) interest in Rosas’s work right from the start. There is even some footage of De Keersmaeker’s debut, Asch, which took place back in 1980, before she went to study in New York.
The documentaries take you behind the scenes of what was at the time still (apart from the musicians) an exclusively female company engaged – on a diet of cigarettes and coffee, in heavy jumpers and in the decidedly austere accommodation provided by what are now the Kaaitheaterstudio’s – in defining contemporary dance. A reluctant but friendly De Keersmaeker, speaking deliberately and clearly, provides a commentary on the activities of her younger (early twenties) self. There is lots of rehearsal footage too, with music, as well as glimpses of the grey Brussels context of the time, which cannot be entirely dissociated from the colour and tone of this groundbreaking work.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Cinéart, NL/FR/EN, 210 min.
Recently, the Film Festival Ghent premiered the film Rain, a documentary by the film-makers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes, who followed the rehearsal process and premiere of De Keersmaeker’s 2001 choreography of the same name, which was revived in 2011 by the Ballet de l’Opéra National de Paris.
Meanwhile, Rosas and Cinéart have released a DVD box with films of the first four productions De Keersmaeker ever made with Rosas: the films that Thierry De Mey made of complete performances of Fase and Rosas danst Rosas, the documentary Répétitions, in which Marie André follows the story of how Elena’s Aria took shape, and Hoppla!, for which Wolfgang Kolb filmed the Béla Bartók pieces Mikrokosmos and Quartet No. 4 in, among other locations, the library of Ghent University. The box set is an indispensable and comprehensive visual record for anyone interested in seeing (again) the choreographies that created such a revolution at the time in the performing arts in Brussels and Belgium. It includes Thierry De Mey’s superb top-shot footage of the “Violin Phase” from Fase, in which you can see how De Keersmaeker, in the course of the choreography, draws a rosette in the sand.
At least as interesting are the many extras included on all four DVDs: episodes of the Dag aan dag and Het gerucht programmes broadcast by the notorious arts service of the then BRT (the predecessor of today’s VRT) in 1982, 1983, and 1986 and the lengthy Dutch TV (NOS) reportage Décalages/Verschuivingen, for which Ger Poppelaars came to Brussels in 1987. The fact that those reportages were made back then tells you something about the (international) interest in Rosas’s work right from the start. There is even some footage of De Keersmaeker’s debut, Asch, which took place back in 1980, before she went to study in New York.
The documentaries take you behind the scenes of what was at the time still (apart from the musicians) an exclusively female company engaged – on a diet of cigarettes and coffee, in heavy jumpers and in the decidedly austere accommodation provided by what are now the Kaaitheaterstudio’s – in defining contemporary dance. A reluctant but friendly De Keersmaeker, speaking deliberately and clearly, provides a commentary on the activities of her younger (early twenties) self. There is lots of rehearsal footage too, with music, as well as glimpses of the grey Brussels context of the time, which cannot be entirely dissociated from the colour and tone of this groundbreaking work.
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