GLA55

10 movements to the music of Philip Glass
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas, Ictus, Bl!ndman

The early works of certain artists often carry a very distinct tonality. They are timeless and recall the energy and radicalness that mark the emergence of a personal style. In 1982, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker entered the international stage of contemporary dance with Fase, a performance in four movements choreographed to the “early pieces” of Steve Reich.
Today, for the first time, De Keersmaeker turns to the early works of another American minimalist composer: Philip Glass. This music, as radical as that of the young Reich, stands out through a paradoxical blend of hyper-formalism and an invitation to trance.

Music in Contrary Motion, Music in Fifths, Music in Similar Motion, Music with Changing Parts: the pieces chosen by De Keersmaeker all date from 1969–1970, a particularly productive period in Glass’s oeuvre.

With GLA55, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to a guiding principle that has run through her entire career: exhausting minimal abstract material to the maximum. This involves notions of trance, repetitive obsessive turning, and spinning. Circles, spirals, and ellipses become the central geometric figures of this piece in ten movements.

For this occasion, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker brings together six Rosas dancers with six musicians from the Ictus Ensemble – longtime partners, in their sixteenth joint project- and the Bl!ndman Ensemble. Together, they showcase their shared approach to the music of Philip Glass.

GLA55 has a duration of 55 minutes and is presented in two different versions: as a blackbox performance, or in a standing circular configuration. Both can be performed either with recorded music or live with six musicians.