Fot. Herman Sorgeloos / http://www.rosas.be/
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, choreographer and innovator of contemporary dance has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance by the Venice Biennale. Previous laureates of the distinction are Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Carlson, Pina Bausch, Jirí Kylián, William Forsythe, Sylvie Guillem, and Steve Paxton. The formal presentation of this distinction will take place in Venice on Saturday, 27 June 2015. The presentation ceremony will be followed by a performance of Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich, her very first choreography (1982) and danced by De Keersmaeker herself.
The press release announcing the honour lauds De Keersmaeker?s ability to combine formal rigour and pathos. Director Virgilio Sieni praises her as the representative of the ?link between creation and the transmission process?. Earlier, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker performed Rain (2001), her choreography to Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich, at the Biennale. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker shares this honour with the Franco-Greek composer Georges Aperghis, who will receives a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music and the Swiss theatre director, Christoph Marthaler, who is honoured in the Theatre category.
In the past the acknowledgment for Lifetime Achievement for Dance has been awarded to Merce Cunningham (1995), Carolyn Carlson (2006), Pina Bausch (2007), Jirí Kylián (2008), William Forsythe (2010), Sylvie Guillem (2012), and Steve Paxton (2014).
?Her poetic gesture expressed through the body, writes Sieni in his motivation, led to a significant transferral between western cultures towards an understanding of the body in theatre as a medium for experimentation with language. She has been mindful of the measure and duration of the sonorous body in the individual and the dancer to carry him to the threshold of the World?.
“Human body expresses abstract ideas ? that’s what I love about dance. We have a body which comes together with a thought. The body is social, emotional, intellectual, sensual, and even chemical at the same time.”
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker interviewed by Aneta Kyzioł for POLITYKA , 4 June 2014
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is a leading choreographer of our times. The influence she had on the development of dance, her charisma, the power of her artistic language, and emotions that she evokes in her audiences may only be compared to what Pina Baush did in contemporary dance. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker performed at the 2014 Malta Festival Poznań, presenting two dance pieces: Fase and Drumming.
Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (Mechelen ? Belgium, 1960) ? Trained at Maurice Béjart?s Mudra in Brussels and at the Tisch School of Arts in New York, her first international success came in 1982, with Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich. In 1983 she founded the Rosas company in Brussels, which made its debut with Rosas danst Rosas, followed in 1984 by Elena?s Aria (to tapes of arias sung by Caruso), in which for the first time she introduced spoken texts and film clips, and by Bartók/Aantekeningen (1986). In 1987 she presented Verkommenes Ufer/Medeamaterial Landschaft mit Argonauten (a dance-theatre piece based on the writings of Heiner Müller), to which over the years she added many other works, including Drumming (1998), Quartett and I said I (1999), In Real Time (2000), Rain (2001, presented at the Dance Biennale), Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg Repertory Evening II (2006), Keeping Still (2007), The Song (2009) and the most recent Partita 2, in which she performed with Boris Charmatz. In 1992 Rosas became the resident company of the La Monnaie Theatre in Brussels, through 2007; since then de Keersmaeker has worked at the creation of a repertory and the foundation of a new contemporary dance school, P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research & Training Studios), which opened in 1995 and was awarded the Silver Lion of the Biennale di Venezia in 2010. In 1992 the short black-and-white film Rosa ? choreography by de Keersmaeker to music by Bartók ? by director Peter Greenaway participated in the 49th Venice International Film Festival. During her career, de Keersmaeker has directed three works of musical theatre: Bluebeard?s Castle by Béla Bartók (1998), I due Foscari by Giuseppe Verdi (2003), Hanjo by Toshio Hosokawa (2004).
Source Malta Festival Poznań: http://malta-festival.pl/
Read more: http://www.labiennale.org/en/biennale/news/30-03.html
