A Subtler Dance — Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s ‘En Atendant’ and ‘Cesena’ at the 18th Sydney Biennale by Andrew Miller
Carriageworks theatre, Sydney, September 11 and 14, 2012
En Atendant
Choreography – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Created and danced by Rosas :
Bostjan Antoncic, Carlos Garbin, Cynthia Loemij, Mark Lorimer, Mikael Marklund, Chrysa Parkinson, Sandy Williams, Sue-Yeon Youn
Music -
…L(ÉLEK)ZEM..’ – Istvan Matuz
En Atendant, souffrir m’estuet (ballade) – Filippo da Caserta
Estampie En Atendant 2 (2010) – Bart Coen
Sus un’ Fontayne (virelai) – Johannes Ciconia
Je prens d’amour noriture (virelai) – anonymous
Esperance, ki en mon coeur – anonymous
Flute – Michael Schmid
Cour et Coeur:
music director and recorders – Bart Coen
fiddle – Birgit Goris
voice – Annelies Van Gramberen
Scenography – Michel François
Costumes – Anne-Catherine Kunz
Rehearsal Director – Femke Gyselinck
Cesena
Concept – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Björn Schmelzer
Choreography – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Musical Director – Björn Schmelzer
Created with and danced by Rosas and graindelavoix:
Olalla Alemán, Haider Al Timimi, Bostjan Antoncic, Aron Blom, Carlos Garbin, Marie Goudot, Lieven Gouwy, David Hernandez, Matej Kejzar, Mikael Marklund, Tomàs Maxé, Julien Monty, Chrysa Parkinson, Marius Peterson, Michael Pomero, Albert Riera, Gabriel Schenker, Yves Van Handenhove, Sandy Williams
Scenography – Ann Veronica Janssens
Costumes – Anne-Catherine Kunz
Music – Ars Subtilior
If all sound comes from movement, and all music comes from sound, then all music comes from movement — and so does all dance. Music is defined also by its silences and its spaces — or rather time — left around the notes, but as John Cage so eloquently expressed, silence is not nothing, even if it does not solely belong to the piece of music, neither to the musicians, their instruments nor the composer. There is always “movement” in the general, figurative sense, in an attentive audience, within their minds, their beating hearts, their souls set vibrating — if one can still hear the trepidation of the spheres over the barbaric post-industrial noise of the world. Dance too, similarly or sympathetically, but perhaps not identically, has stillness (despite the multi-modal thrill of the Waltz) sometimes not even with a pose, as we see in En Atendant and Cesena, where the dancers are often merely left as if a scattered handful of sand or the denizens in their place, and neither does this stillness preclude “movement” in the broader, non-scientific sense (though to be fair to science, even in mathematics, the derivative where it equals zero still exists).
Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!

