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Rosas, the Concertgebouw Brugge, and De Munt Present Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s new "The Goldberg Variations, BWV988" for a Limited Audience

Rosas, the Concertgebouw Brugge, and De Munt Present Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s new "The Goldberg Variations, BWV988" for a Limited Audience

Published on June 10, 2020

Rosas, the Concertgebouw Brugge and De Munt (Brussels) will be presenting Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s new solo performance The Goldberg Variations, BWV988, from 1 to 4 July to a limited audience in the Rosas Performance Space at the Rosas site in Brussels.

The world première of this performance was originally planned for the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna from 31 May to 3 June and the Belgian première at the Concertgebouw in Brugge today and tomorrow on 9 and 10 June. However, the corona crisis had other plans and so the world première and the Belgian première have been moved to August and September, respectively. Now that the government has announced that public performances may once again go ahead from 1 July 2020 under strict conditions, Rosas is adding a preview series allowing this new creation to be presented to the public as soon as it is permitted.
 
The Goldberg Variations belong to Bach’s late period, in which the composer pushes the boundaries of musical themes in a play of variations, canons and fugues. For this composition, he started from a simple and quiet melody, joined with an underlying bass line, which steadily unfolds into a musical cosmos that reveals itself with extraordinary variety and unparalleled complexity.
 
Together with pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Alain Franco, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her journey with Bach in dialogue with these variations The large casting of The Six Brandenburg Concertos – her previous creation to music by Bach – is now brought back to a solo performance danced by De Keersmaeker herself. In doing so, she stays true to the same principle of the musical score as the blueprint for choreography.
 
Spanning no less than one aria and thirty variations, the music challenges the choreography to a similar exercise in width: to find a form of dance capable of adaptation and flexibility while retaining an immutable core. To De Keersmaeker, it is above all an invitation to consolidate the road travelled as an artist, posing today’s questions in her ongoing search for a personal choreographic idiom.
 
Pavel Kolesnikov and Alain Franco will be taking turns accompanying the performance in this series.
 
To observe the current measures, Rosas will allow entrance to 40 people every performance. Ticket sales will start Thursday 25 June at 12 pm via the website www.rosas.be and will close when the tickets are sold out. Ticket sales will only be conducted through this website and everybody will only be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets. Tickets will be €20.
 
In collaboration with the theatres where The Goldberg Variations, BWV988 were set to première originally, Rosas started looking for alternative performance dates. The following première dates are confirmed:
 
Avant-première:
1 – 4 July 2020, Rosas Performance Space, Brussels
 
World première:
27 – 30 August 2020, Wiener Festwochen, Wenen
 
Belgian première:
29 September – 2 October 2020, Concertgebouw, Brugge
 
Brussels première:
3 – 5 & 10 – 13 December 2020, Kaaitheater, Brussels, in collaboration with De Munt
 
Further tour dates will soon be published on www.rosas.be.

The Goldberg Variations, BWV988
 
Choreography and dance
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Music
Johann Sebastian Bach, The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Piano
Pavel Kolesnikov / Alain Franco

Choreographic assistant
Diane Madden

Production
Rosas

Coproduction
Wiener Festwochen, Concertgebouw (Brugge), De Munt / La Monnaie, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Internationaal Theater Amsterdam / Julidans, Sadler’s Wells (London), Montpellier Danse

 


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