GLA55

In 1982, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker stepped onto the international contemporary dance stage with Fase, a performance in four movements choreographed to the early works of Steve Reich.

Today, De Keersmaeker turns for the first time to the earliest works of another American minimalist composer: Philip Glass. This music, as radical as that of the young Reich, is marked by a paradoxical blend of hyper-formalism and an invitation to trance.

Inspired by BL!NDMAN’s interpretation on their three-part CD ICONS, The American minimalists, De Keersmaeker now chooses Music in Fifths, Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Similar Motion and Music with Changing Parts. These pieces date from 1969–1970, an exceptionally fertile period in Glass’s oeuvre.

With GLA55, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to a principle that runs throughout her entire career: exhausting minimal abstract material to the utmost. This involves notions of trance, repetitive-obsessive rotation and “spinning”. Circles, spirals and ellipses become the central geometric figures of this work in ten movements.

For this occasion, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker reunites six Rosas dancers with seven musicians from the ensembles ICTUS and BL!NDMAN. Together, they reveal their parallel approaches to the music of Philip Glass.