Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Björn Schmelzer (B) Cesena herbst opening

40% dance 10% beauty 40% singing 10% clarity

Dancers sing, singers dance. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – who has long been one of the most influential choreographers of our time, with her conceptually clear and yet enchantingly beautiful productions – takes the idea of this collaboration seriously. Björn Schmelzer’s unique vocal ensemble graindelavoix not only provides the music for the dancing, but is also, from the outset, part of this co-operation, that was first conceived for the open Court d’Honneur at the Palais des Papes in Avignon and has now been adapted and opens as the stage première at this year’s steirischer herbst.
Nineteen dancers and singers in the set and lighting of Ann Veronica Janssens – a sculpture of passing time – explore the limits of their skills in a dialogue with music that, while hailing from a world distant in time, nevertheless paradoxically corresponds to our contemporary understanding of music in terms of its complexity and abstraction: ars subtilior from the late 14th century uses a complex notation to combine three seemingly independent voices so as to create a rhythmically extremely differentiated score. “Cesena” consciously sets a rarely practised style of music in counterpoint to our musical canon, thus tapping into new worlds of hearing and seeing.