With The Goldberg Variations Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker goes forty years after her solo Phase only on stage to dance. Just like with the fairly recent Partita 2, the intimate, dark and contemplative Mitten wir im Leben sind (where she chose to work out a choreography on the 6 cello suites by Bach and accompanied live by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras) and the youthful, flamboyant, energetic and high-spirited The Six Brandenburg Concertos If she chooses this solo, she is accompanied live by Pavel Kolesnikov on the piano, for the second time for her favorite composer: Johann Sebastian Bach to create and recreate on it, based on the vocabulary that has developed over the years. With The Goldberg Variations, especially in the first movement, she leans closer to Mitten than to The Six Brandenburg Concertos. Simplicity and modesty are therefore the keywords of the melody that we hear from the keys, around which we vary thirty times. 30, half of 60. Reached last year’s age. The Goldberg Variations therefore reads in a sense as a birthday present for the public and for themselves. Building on the past, dancing towards the future. Keeping track of and refining what has been made, and immediately looking for what she has not yet found.

Just as Bach made an overview of his work with baroque dance rhythms, including gigues, passe-pieds, sarabandes and minuets, and also refers to the future, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker follows him, granted. In the Goldberg Variations, De Keersmaeker refers, among other things, to Fase. Not by turning her around and stretching an arm, though. No, in this solo she does so with a straight leg. Just before the technical break, she pushes a gold-colored bar forward to roll it back at the start of the second part. refers to the choreography to Drumming. And in blowing her palm we thought we saw a link with Partita 2.

If we know that the number 5, also seen here in the pentagram on the floor and the dodecahedron (which consists of twelve pentagonal surfaces), is also present in this choreography, then we often see the dancer making a rectangle with the index fingers and thumb , to another art form, painting. The film is also present. For example, on the right side there is a silver cloth, the silver cloth, which can be considered a link to the film, or even to Warhol if you will. In the front left, where the black grand piano is located, we see the same foil, but then on the gold-coloured side, on a hoop: the emergency blanket.

The L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze cannot be missed in The Goldberg Variations. Desire (reaching the hands upwards or forwards), culture (references to other arts), the zigzag movement (legs slightly bent), illness (we see how Anne Teresa finally drags her left zig, seen that she is dominant on the right is, turning on her axis on the right is easier on her than on the left), childhood and also mental problems in between.

So wonderful is the dialogue or literal confrontation that she enters into with the composer and the pianist when she hangs from the grand piano, cannot immediately think of something she can perform, when music can be heard, when the pianist continues in an arc to chases him off his piano stool, and in the end lets her domineering little finger go up in the air to moan at the orange light that’s still on, to get it out. Even spinning with her pianist ensures that she is literally in step with her and continues to be choreographed, demonstrating De Keersmaeker’s sense of detail, in addition to her sense of humor.

John Travolta points the finger in the air, which is a big nod to Saturday Night Fever. Delicious. Although the second part certainly feels lighter than the first, there is also a dose of seriousness in the work. Thus we see the choreographer dragging herself along like an old woman, even sitting down to the right, placing the right hand on her left thigh and then falling over. In addition, a scythe movement (that of Pietje de Dood?) returns a number of times.

Finally, we should not forget to mention Minna Tiikkainen. What a beautiful lighting design she drew for The Goldberg Variations! She also refers to the rectangle when a rectangular surface gradually slides from behind the wing, above, to in front of it. She then makes the surface smaller than both the choreographer and the pianist are placed in almost dark, and then places the visual accent on the gold-coloured emergency blanket. And so The Goldberg Variations puts the focus on Staying alive.

< Bert Hertogs >