OPERA BALLET VLAANDEREN

In five astonishing pieces by three choreographers from different generations, the dancers of the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen rekindle a joyous dialogue between dance and contemporary chamber music.

The works of Trisha Brown, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Jan Martens have often embraced twentieth-century virtuoso, minimalist music in works that balance abstraction and legibility, freedom and constraints. Fase and Clapping Music by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker provide a model of this. Taken from Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich (1982), they inaugurate a game using the geometry of movements and the repetition of simple, recombined sentences, which have become a signature of this choreographer. Trisha Brown’s Twelve Ton Rose (1996) is a later creation by this American choreographer that is no less iconic. Guided par the dodecaphonic music of Austrian composer Anton Webern, the piece plays on counterpoint to surprising effect. A great admirer of these two more senior artists, Jan Martens created the solo work Elisabeth Gets Her Way in 2021, from which he has extracted the frenetic On Speed, and which is danced to Stephen Montague’s music composed for harpsichord. The Belgian choreographer is also presenting a new work, Graciela Quintet, inspired by the pure lines of Graciela Paraskevaídis’s compositions.