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By Sarah Cecilia Bukowski
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Published on March 5, 2024
Photo by Anne Van Aerschot
Choreography and Dance: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988
Piano: Pavel Kolesnikov | Musical Collaboration: Alain Franco | Choreographic Assistant: Diane Madden
Set and Lighting Design: Minna Tiikkainen | Sound: Alban Moraud | Assistant to the Artistic Director: Martine Lange | Artistic Coordination and Planning: Anne Van Aerschot | Technical Director: Thomas Verachtert | Technical Coordinator: Thomas Verachtert | Costumes Coordinator: Alexandra Verschueren, assisted by Els Van Buggenhout // Sewing: Emmanuelle Erhart // Wardrobe: Alexandra Verschueren // Technician: Jan Balfoort // Production: Rosas // Coproduction:Wiener Festwochen, Concertgebouw (Bruges), De Munt / La Monnaie (Brussels), Théâtre de la Ville à Paris – Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Internationaal Theater Amsterdam / Julidans, Sadler’s Wells (London), Montpellier Danse
World Premiere: August 26, 2020 at Wiener Festwochen
Performance Dates: February 22 - 24, 2024
Special thanks to Takeshi Sakai, Anke Loh, Kees Van Houten, Leen Decin, Cynthia Loemij, Jacob Storer
Pavel Kolesnikov and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
Goldberg
the artist’s Everest
a labyrinthine enigma of startling clarity
a gauntlet for the hands
a trance for the ears
a delight for the dancing body
infinite possibility in its sprawl and tangle
including nothing
nothing is always an option
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
somehow Goldberg will never be like other oft-used musics
it is limitless
almost achingly so
an impossibility worth every effort of possibling
even nothing
nothing is always an option
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
I’d like to ask the others why
Jerome Robbins might look down his nose at me
Pam Tanowitz might shrug a small smile
would that I could have asked Steve Paxton
given our shared affinity for the Glenn Gould of it all
I’ve played this recording over and over now
I’m listening to it now
it’s got two scratches where it skips
(in variations two and eight)
I ever so gently advance the needle ever just barely
to the next smooth groove
an error of materiality
mars flawless immateriality
maybe
like these artists
I want to know every note
but most of all
I want to know what it’s like to make them
to play them
with hands alone
or body in full
but I keep wandering off
I keep getting lost
and I wonder how many more times until I know
and I think
Anne Teresa wonders the same
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
when to dance feels absurd
contrived in the face of something so baroque
that still somehow puts contrivance to shame
like Goldberg is sprung naturally from the cosmos
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
and then
when to dance feels absurd
contrived in the face of yourself
when you’ve danced a lifetime and realize
there’s no way you’ll ever reach the end of dancing
Pavel Kolesnikov and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
but still you try
on a bare stage
the piano
the floor
the aria
the variations
(hands spine arms knees ribs hips feet)
until and beyond
the aria’s inevitable return
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
get lost
get found
frame up
float off
slice a soft vertical
hang in bloom
swing a phrase under
swing another over
hop skip slide
kick and flip
scurry and cavort
bound and dash and whirl and teeter
live in mistakes
in risk and recovery
there are no mistakes
only momentum
Pavel Kolesnikov and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
meanwhile
(all the while)
(or most of the while)
dancing hand over hand over hand over hand
lush and languid
never frantic
a most friendly fugue
an exquisite haunting
reverence and humor pour from his hands
bare feet on the pedals
it all carries an air of spontaneity
a calculated careening
meticulously planned
vertiginously plunged
rapturously alive
Pavel Kolesnikov; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
she dances in and out of the reflected light of herself
off a silver foil like sail or screen or mirror or or or
a reflection changed with time
its origin unchanged
it passes across and over
like a celestial body
crawls a corner up the wall
flattens itself
squares its obliquities
rests on the piano
and vanishes
into nothing
nothing, the eternal option
Pavel Kolesnikov and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
below the surface
in a dream
every note pushes out and lingers
every movement leaves its trace
their instruments strew them about
pick them back up
hold them and drop them again
subatomic particles build elemental forms
like anything
like everything
reflections in the dark
dancing with her shadow
almost like you’d expect it to dance of its own accord
still and always
presence and unpresence move as one
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
how silly and sacred to spend a life dancing
navigating with assurance
meandering unmoored
in a muted dream
in a ringing rhythmic field
in a chaos of perfect order
anything is possible
everything could be
and still nothing
nothing is always an option
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker; photo by Anne Van Aerschot
