Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s VORTEX TEMPORUM manifests the relationship between dancers and musicians at BAM

• By drediman
• October 17, 2016
• No Comments

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s “Vortex Temporum” at BAM

This past weekend, I returned to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to catch Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Vortex Temporum, a dance set to spectral composer Gérard Grisey’s shimmering, tension-filled score of the same name. Ms. Keersmaeker, who is one of the headliners of this year’s edition of the Next Wave Festival, has made a name for herself in the contemporary dance world with her gestural choreography and intensely structured yet sensual sense of musicality. In Vortex Temporum, she zones in on the relationship between dancers and musicians with striking clarity and intimacy.

As danced by Ms. Keersmaeker’s company Rosas and played by the Belgian contemporary music ensemble Ictus (each dancer is paired with a respective musician), the hour-long performance of Vortex Temporum I attended exuded a playful excitement and accessibility that sometimes eludes Ms. Keersmaeker’s works.  By including the musicians into the swirling architecture of the dance, she creates a direct, physical exchange between choreography and music, thereby humanizing the dance – and taking it out of the purely academic realm.

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VORTEX TEMPORUM
Dance/Music
Rosas and Ictus at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
1 hour, 5 minutes (without an intermission)
Closed