Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s world-renowned dance company Rosas returns with her iconic piece, Rain. The Sadler’s Wells International Associate Company performs the piece live with contemporary music ensemble Ictus in London on Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 June.
Known for her appreciation of mathematical structure and the geometric use of space, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker pushes these concepts to their limits to form a deceptively simple piece in Rain, using layers of repetition and variation. Each of the 10 dancers plays a distinct role in their close group, before giving in to the power of the collective with an exuberant and playful camaraderie.
The production is performed with live music by Ictus to Steve Reich’s masterpiece, the minimalist Music for 18 Musicians, which is inspired by breath rhythms.
Accompanied by Reich’s music, a company of 10 new dancers occupy the stage, delineated by a curtain of fine strings, displaying a succession of virtuoso dance phrases. In Rain, De Keersmaeker approaches the company of dancers as a close-knit group of pronounced individuals who, one by one, play a vital role in the whole. Seven women and three men allow themselves to be propelled by an unstoppable joined energy that binds them together. It’s a bustling network in which breath and speed is shared as well as that special comradery that forms when you are beyond fatigue.
After studying at the Mudra dance school and the Tisch School of Arts in New York, in 1980 De Keersmaeker created Asch, her first choreographic work. 1982 saw the premiere of Fase, four movements to the music of Steve Reich, one of the most iconic pieces of choreography of the era, which went on to become one of the inaugural works staged at the Tate Modern’s Tanks Gallery in London in 2011. Her other recent works include Partita 2 (2013), a duet with dancer and choreographer Boris Charmatz, set to Bach’s partita No. 2 and Rosas & Ictus Vortex Temporum (2014), set to renowned French composer Gérard Grisey’s score of the same name, both at Sadler’s Wells.
Ictus is a Brussels-based contemporary music ensemble. The ensemble’s home since 1994 has been the Rosas dance company’s premises. Headed by De Keersmaeker the dance troupe has put on fourteen productions in collaboration with Ictus (from Amor Constante to Drumming, and more recently Vortex Temporum). Ictus has also collaborated with other choreographers including Wim Vandekeybus, Maud Le Pladec, Eleanor Bauer and Fumiyo Ikeda.
Rain originally premiered in 2001, and this production is a Sadler’s Wells co-production with De Munt / La Monnaie (Brussel/Bruxelles) and Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg.
For more information and to book your tickets, visit the venue’s website.