Zeitung

Simplicity and essence

In Zeitung, which enjoyed a triumphant premiere in Paris on 11th January this year, the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and pianist Alain Franco, together with the Rosas dancers, go in search of the unstable combination of music and dance, choreography and improvisation, romance and disillusion. De Keersmaeker returns to simplicity, to the essential building blocks of choreography: the two spirals of the turning body, the dancers as a mass of materialised energy. Alain Franco traces the evolution of harmony in the history of music. In a broad historical gesture, Johann Sebastian Bach, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern intersect the geometrical principles and improvisational wild cards of the choreography. Harmony is sought out and simultaneously released again. Work on the music and the choreography took place largely independently of each other: like two trains from different directions travelling towards each other: where will their paths cross? When will they meet? Alain Franco provides live piano accompaniment for the nine dancers. Jan Joris Lamers designed the set and lighting.