Winner tripled for the Vlaanderen Opera Ballet in La Villette

By offering herself three choreographers: Trisha Brown, Anne-Teresa de Keersmaecker and Jan Martens under the same sign of contemporary music, the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen offers an exciting program at the Grande Halle de la Villette.

Two Madones and a young man: aligning on the same evening Trisha Brown, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Jan Martens, the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (the ex Ballet de Flandres) declines on three different generations the same interest in contemporary music, by offering a real diversity of aesthetics.

The evening begins with the dean, Trisha Brown (1936-2017), who became interested in several Webern string opus to work on the counterpoints. She throws the dancers on stage, and they put the accents on music or in her interstices, with many balanceds, raised on the knees, falls of the body, straight arms, forward or on the side, torso in square. If the first sequence sees the girls in a black dress and the boys in red, the second part engages towards a beautiful unprecedented colors and movements. The sequences are rigorous, and mathematics, and are very close to Merce Cunningham. Created in 1996, Twelve Ton Rose (A play on words around “Twelve Ton Rows” (Dodecaphonism, dear to Schönberg) is a late play in the work of Trisha Brown, and yet it has a form of wisdom that makes it surprisingly dated to the gaze of what will follow.

Car Phasethe chief of work From Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker from which the two extracts shown here come here, is much more daring, cheeky, original or even disturbing. However he dates from 1982. The young Belgian was only in her second play and she changed his career: like Béjart and his Spring coronation which opens the doors of her 20th century ballet to him, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker Put, in line with the immense success of Phase (That she danted with Michèle Anne de Mey), create her own troop. Here we see two of the four parts of this ballet entirely based on works by Steve Reich. Piano Phase is a long but captivating minimalist rehearsal of movements limited to half-tours on site, then small repetitive profile steps, but when one of the two dancers shifts its movement from a note, unison differs and returns as if by miracle. Jasmine Achtart and Madison Vomastek, dressed in a long beige dress and white sneakers, are lit in such a way that their body is reflected in their own shadow. In Clapping music, On handbacking, the two young women return to the pants-sickening pants, on a black background, and tend their foot in front of behind and on points in eight times then four times … These two pieces, exhausting for the dancers, could seem annoying by their repetitiveness. In reality, they are hypnotizing and fascinating by the very richness of their sobriety.

We switch to another world with the youngest, Jan Martens, who offers here a creation, Graciela Quintetas well as a recovery. The creation had everything to be attractive with these five dancers dressed in amazing latex costumes. Here, jeans, there a short-halt-shirt short-shirt, again a padded cycling shorts. We then see evolving on bird songs a quintet of dancers who have become a comic strip characters, who suddenly see their outfit to unravel and become other characters. It is amazing, inventive but confusing, because the movement remains quite poor. Which is quite the opposite of his famous solo, On speedon the frenzied harpsichord of Stephen Montague. Shirtless, alone with music, a dancer (impressive David Ledger) fights with her, moves only his chest, his arms, as fast as music, he fights with or against her, and it is fascinating to see how dance and music can compete, marry and separate, forming, by the grace of these three choreographers, a joyfully infernal couple.

Photographic credits © Phile Deprez

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