2016

Rain

Rain, set to Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (1976), is one of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s most characteristic performances. With this vibrant choreography, De Keersmaeker returned, in 2001, to two of her great loves: pure dance and the minimalistic music of Steve Reich. Accompanied by the pulsating tones of his music, for an hour and ten minutes ten dancers occupy the stage, delineated by a curtain of fine strings, displaying an impressive succession of virtuoso dance phrases. The mathematical figures, the sustained repetition, the geometric occupation of the space, the art of continuous variation – everything that had gradually become the choreographer’s signature was pushed to the extreme in Rain.

In Rain, De Keersmaeker approaches the company of dancers as a close-knit group of pronounced individuals who, one by one, play a vital role in the whole. Seven women and three men allow themselves to be propelled by an unstoppable joined energy that binds them together. It's a bustling network in which breath and speed is shared as well as that special comradery that forms when you are beyond fatigue.