Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Björn Schmelzer (B)

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker burst onto the contemporary artistic scene at the beginning of the 1980s, with pieces that have since become absolute references. Written according to the principles of repetitive music, “Fase” in 1982 then “Rosas Danst Rosas” the next year renewed the links that had become somewhat distended between music and dance since the works of Merce Cunningham and John Cage. What is striking in these first works its their extreme choreographic maturity, established on a virtuoso practice of movement and in an almost mathematical link with space and time. All the shows to come were already contained in this stripped-down grammar: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker had found her groove and has constantly and tenaciously deepened it. With an incomparable capacity for work, an openness to the most diverse musical styles and an ability to appropriate every choreographic influence, the Belgian artist has built a lively repertory, marked by emblematic pieces such as “Mozart/Concert Arias”, “Rain” and more recently “Zeitung” and “The Song”. A repertory that she keeps up with her company, Rosas, and the school she founded in Brussels in 1995, P.A.R.T.S. Rosas has strong international connections and performs at the leading contemporary dance venues in Europe and far beyond. At the same time, its continued presence in Belgium remains a priority. Rosas is an open house and shares its infrastructure not only with P.A.R.T.S., but also with musicians, other companies and guests.
www.rosas.be

In 1999 Björn Schmelzer founded the Antwerp ensemble Graindelavoix takes its name from an essay by Roland Barthes. "The grain is the body in the voice that sings, the hand that writes, in the member that executes," the French semiologist asserted. What interests Björn Schmelzer, a ethnomusicologist by training, fascinated by early music, is the relationship of the notation and what is not written, that is, the knowledge and know-how of the interpreter that permit him to make a work come alive again beyond the score, through ornamentation, improvisation, phrasing and gesture. Between transmission and creation, Graindelavoix clears its own path to revisit sound images of the past.