Partita 2

One marked the Festival right from her first show there in 1983, the other was associate artist in 2011. That same year, they each premiered choreography for the Cour d'honneur. It was at the Festival d'Avignon that Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Boris Charmatz danced together, for the first time, just “to see”. An experience in silence during which their understanding was obvious, the two artists sharing the same attachment for the choreographed structure, the same taste for the freedom that improvisation offers. What better terrain to explore that tension between the rigor of the writing and emotion, precision and sensitivity than Bach's music? For this duet that she choreographed for them, Anne Teresa chose Partita no. 2 for violin, interpreted on stage by Amandine Beyer. How do you approach this musical monument whose implacable construction nourishes the sacred? How do you respect such a pure work while introducing the gust that will make it tremble? Together, they studied the score, isolated the melody lines, identified the counterpoints and picked out the most striking parts. A method that the Belgian choreographer has been patiently developing in each of her creations since Fase, imagined in 1982 on music by Steve Reich. Along with this in-depth understanding of the musical structure of Partita n° 2 is the immediate and carnal pleasure the dancers feel. Their dance is crossed by staggers and leaps that they abandon themselves to in taking possession of this composition inspired by German baroque dances like the gigue and the courante. Until the final, heartrending chaconne, they interpret with two bodies the five movements written for solo violin, aware of the great mastery this work demands, without however being too respectful. On the empty stage of the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes, which only the musician and her instrument inhabit, Anne Teresa De Keeersmaeker and Boris Charmatz show the interlacing and contact points of their respective research and of the pleasure of thinking and dancing together. RB

choreography Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
music Johann Sebastian Bach
scenography Michel François
costumes Anne-Catherine Kunz
artistic assistant and rehearsal manager Femke Gyselinck
artistic coordination Anne Van Aerschot

with Boris Charmatz, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
and violin Amandine Beyer

production Rosas
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, La Monnaie / De Munt (Bruxelles), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Bruxelles), ImPulsTanz (Vienne), La Bâtie Festival de Genève, Berliner Festspiele / Foreign Affairs, Théâtre de la Ville avec le Festival d'Automne à Paris, Fondation Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbonne), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Francfort)
with the support of: Musée de la danse/Centre chorégraphique national de Rennes et de Bretagne, Autorités flamandes et de Middle Oak