Kassandra-speaking in twelve voices

From the start of her career Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has regularly made performances in which text plays an important part. In a more recent period (cf. Just Before, I said I, Quartett, In Real Time) this resulted in an almost systematic study of the relationship between words and movement. For all these performances Anne Teresa worked in collaboration with her sister Jolente (Tg Stan). This is also true of Kassandra. speaking in twelve voices, which was created in 2004.

Cassandra, one of the daughters of King Priam of Troy, is given the gift of prophesy by the god Apollo. However, because she refuses to oblige the god, he takes revenge: Cassandra will predict the future but nobody will believe her. After the Trojan War Agamemnon takes Cassandra with him as a slave to Greece.

The writer and actor Oscar van Woensel (Dood Paard) wrote an English script for the seven women and five men of the Rosas company in which he allows Cassandra to speak in twelve voices: as many voices as there are dancers on stage. The whole performance takes place in the last twelve seconds of Cassandra's life. It is just like the film she sees flashing past at the moment of her death, into which are concentrated both her whole life and the lives of the Greek mythological figures around her. One character picks up the thread of the story from another. Most of them are dressed in black skirts. A huge moving wall often blocks their way on stage. Next to, in front of, behind and on this wall they speak their lines and they too start to move. When dancers turn actor the text always becomes more physical; their speech is more raw and searching than that of actors. 

The Kassandra Rosas will play this season is a revised version of the 2004 performance. The most important change is in the balance between text and movement: the addition of more extensive movement material makes the performance more like pure dance, as in former projects like Just Before and In Real Time.