BREL

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Solal Mariotte / Rosas

BREL is a collaboration between Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and dancer and upcoming choreographer Solal Mariotte. After graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in 2022, Mariotte, who also has a background in breaking, joined Rosas in 2023 for EXIT ABOVE.

The starting point for this new creation is a selection of compositions by chansonnier Jacques Brel. De Keersmaeker and Mariotte bring diverging approaches to choreography and dance to this project. Two generations apart, they also have very different histories with the singer, who was born in Brussels in 1929 and rose to international fame in the 1950s and 60s. Dense, poetic, and often political, Brel’s powerful lyrics conjure up a range of moods and emotions. We are also familiar with the image of Brel, his extraordinary stage presence and gestural expressivity. Brel projects an incredible energy, speaks to and moves his audience in a direct, personal, and almost physical manner. While arguably addressing ‘timeless’ themes, including friendship, relationships, socio-political shifts, and violence, Brel’s songs also make tangible a gap in time. They resonate very differently with the world today. What remains? What kind of tools do Brel’s modes of address and performativity offer? What to keep and how to set it in motion in a manner relevant for today? The challenge lies not only in figuring out how to ‘embody’ Brel’s music – how to bring it to life – in a way that speaks to us today, while maintaining a critical remove, but also in finding ways to really share the stage with Jacques Brel.

In 2002, De Keersmaeker created her second dance solo, Once, to the music of Joan Baez. Playing the entire album Joan Baez in Concert, part 2, the choreographer set out to examine various possible answers – in movement, voice, and gesture – to the emotions and power embodied by Baez’ music and lyrics, which also inspired the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. In 2023, EXIT ABOVE was created to songs written especially for the work and performed live on stage by singer-songwriter Meskerem Mees and dancer-musician Carlos Garbin. In BREL, De Keersmaeker and Mariotte, who will share the stage for the first time, will continue this trajectory, and further explore the challenges and potential of choreographing to songs. The artists find inspiration in the complexities and tensions inherent to Brel’s life and oeuvre. In BREL, they aim in the first place to raise questions. BREL is a search, an exploration of the shifts and gaps in time that come to the surface when revisiting Jacques Brel’s famous chansons today.