De Keersmaeker / Grisey: Vortex Temporum

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is one of the few choreographers who repeatedly seeks to engage with contemporary music. For around ten years now, she has been working on Vortex Temporum, a late work by the French composer Gérard Grisey, who died in 1998. The instrumental mixtures of the work are based on physical qualities of pitch and overtones and result in a broad spectrum of colorful harmonies and sounds. The title—temporal vortex—refers a striking feel for circular or spiral patterns of movement, figures that surface in a great deal of Rosa’s choreography.

Vortex temporum combines the work of two exceptional Belgian ensembles: ROSAS, a company founded by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and the new music specialists Ictus Ensemble. Together, they explore how time condenses and extends, contracts and develops, making possible a choreographic counterpoint of sounds, gestures, and the dynamic of the space that grants an equal importance and autonomy to both components. In her last two masterpieces, En Atendant und Cesena, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was able to make the polyphony of early music almost sculpturally visible and make movements spatially audible. In Vortex temporum, De Keersmaeker once again seeks to engage with both the score and the space of Jahrhunderthalle Bochum.