CANCELLED: The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
Please note: this show has been cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.
The Goldberg Variations belong to Bach’s late period in which the composer pushed the possibilities of musical themes to the extreme in an interplay of variations, canons, and fugues. For this composition, he started from a simple and quiet melody and an underlying bass line that steadily unfolds into a musical cosmos that reveals itself with extraordinary variety and unparalleled complexity.
Along with pianist Pavel Kolesnikov, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her journey with Bach in dialogue with these variations. The large casting of The Six Brandenburg Concertos – the previous Rosas creation to music by Bach – is now brought back as a solo performance danced by De Keersmaeker herself. Here too, the musical score forms a blueprint for the choreography.
With one aria and thirty variations, the music challenges the dance to find a form that is in constant flux but also has an immutable core. De Keersmaeker brings together her journey as a choreographer and her ongoing search for a personal choreographic idiom.
choreography & dance Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker | music Johann Sebastian Bach, The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 | piano Pavel Kolesnikov | production Rosas | co-production Wiener Festwochen, Concertgebouw Brugge, De Munt/La Monnaie, Théâtre de la Ville à Paris – Théâtre du Châtelet, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam/Julidans, Sadler’s Wells, Montpellier Danse | realized with the support of the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government, in collaboration with Casa Kafka Pictures Tax Shelter empowered by Belfius | Rosas is supported by the Flemish Community and by the BNP Paribas Foundation
