De Keersmaeker/Schmelzer: Cesena

Dancers sing, singers dance: in Cesena, De Keersmaeker is able to achieve a collaboration of a special kind by having Björn Schmelzer’s unique vocal ensemble graindelavoix fuse with her dance company ROSAS to form a large movement and music ensemble.

Originally premiered at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, this piece refers to the story of the location. The anti-pope Clemens VII. authorized a massacre in the Italian city of Cesena in 1377. Movements and music refer to the bloody deed, generalizing it, and immersing the location and the event with captivating, comforting melancholy.

The French Le Monde spoke of the beauty of an asteroid. A fitting image for the attractively exotic, the strangely otherwordly and distant nature of a performance that begins in the dark and ends with the arrival of the new day. Nineteen dancers and singers explore the limits of their abilities in dialog with the music of Ars Subtilor.

The Belgian artist collective graindelavoix is one of the most innovative ensembles in the realm of early music. Founded in 1999 by Björn Schmelzer, the name graindelavoix is taken from an essay by Roland Barthes, »The Grain of the Voice.« »The grain is the body in the singing voice, in the writing hand, in the performing limb.« Schmelzer counters existing listening habits by surveying the space between notation and creation.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the formative choreographers of contemporary dance. With the founding piece of her company ROSAS, Rosas danst Rosas, she achieved an international breakthrough in 1983. She is the co-founder and director of P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels, one of the most important European centers in the realms of dance and performance. She closely collaborates with the choreographers Jérôme Bel and Boris Charmatz. The company presented 2008 the German premiere of Zeitung at the Ruhrtriennale.