OPERA BALLET VLAANDEREN
MARTENS – DE KEERSMAEKER – BROWN
© Opera Ballet Vlaanderen / Phile Deprez / Twelve Tone Rose
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels supports La Villette for the presentation of On speed and Graciela Quintet by Jan Martens, Fase by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Twelve Tone Rose by Trisha Brown, by the 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.
about the artists
© Johan Jacobs
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels supports the MC93 for the presentation of EXIT ABOVE, after the tempest by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The initiative is also supporting La Villette in presenting the Belgian choreographer's Fase: Piano Phase & Clapping Music as part of a programme performed by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
© Johan Elbers
Trisha Brown
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels presents in collaboration with Sadler's Wells Working Title by Trisha Brown in a double bill as part of the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef festival in London. The initiative is also supporting La Villette for the presentation of Twelve Ton Rose by the American choreographer as part of a programme performed by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
© Stine Stampers
Jan Martens
In 2025, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting La Villette for the presentation of Graciele Quintet and On Speed by the Belgian choreographer as part of a programme performed by the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
Jan Martens (1984, Belgium) studied at the Fontys Dance Academy in Tilburg and graduated in 2006 from the dance department of the Artesis Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. Since 2010 he has been making his own choreographic work which, over the years, has been performed with increasing regularity before a national and international audience.
The work of Jan Martens is nurtured by the belief that each body can communicate, that each body has something to say. That direct communication expresses itself in transparent forms. His work is a sanctuary in which the notion of time becomes tangible again and in which there is room for observation and emotion as well as reflection. To achieve this result he creates not so much a movement language of his own, but shapes and reuses existing idioms in a different context so that new ideas emerge. In each new work he tries to redraw the relation between public and performer.
