2013

Vortex Temporum

In Vortex Temporum Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker takes on the polyphony in Gérard Grisey’s eponymous masterpiece with a danced counterpoint for seven dancers. Probing the question: ‘how can you visualise polyphony by dancing it?’. De Keersmaeker decided to stage an intricate intertwining of sound and movement. Each dancer is linked to one of the seven musicians, and colours his or her dancing with patterns of movement proper to the instrument. Both the dancers and musicians travel the stage following a pattern – a vortex – of swirling circles. As De Keersmaeker observes: ‘Time can be thought of as both linear and cyclical. That which we call ‘now’ is, in fact, a permanent tipping point; a balancing act between memory and anticipation, leaning back and forth between the ghost image of the past and a desire towards the future.’