Kaaitheater takes on dance history in its own way with the Re:Move dance festival. Several international choreographers explore themes of dance history and repertoire in a dozen works in as many days. Each work poses a challenge: some challenges will be met, some will miss the target, but all should shed new light on a century of dance.

Several Re:Move works reach back to the beginning of the 20th century. I’m particularly curious to see Amsterdam-based dancer Nicole Beutler’s interpretation of Mikhail Fokin’s classical ballet masterpiece Les Sylphides. The plotless work is 100 years old and remains a test of a corps de ballet’s precision of movement.

French dancer Xavier Le Roy, meanwhile, tackles the famous Stravinsky/Nijinsky collaboration, Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), whose premiere in Paris in 1913 led to an audience riot. Le Roy focuses on the music, basing his work on the movements of conductor Simon Rattle during rehearsal with the Berlin Philharmonic – an unusual approach to this difficult work.

Other Re:Move choreographers will hone in on an individual influential dancer or choreographer. The festival itself is dedicated to two dance greats who died last year – Merce Cunningham, leader of the American avant-garde, and the German modern dance choreographer Pina Bausch. The Re:Movies film series, integrated into the festival, features free films on these influential choreographers.

In fact, the illustrated book Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years serves as an inspiration to the French choreographer Boris Charmatz’s latest work, Flip Book. Charmatz links together the photos from Vaughn’s book, reviving Cunningham, his work and his methods in one fell swoop.

Still other performances take on the practice and process of developing dance. Dance works are traditionally staged with an emphasis on recreating the steps of the original – even while emotions and stylistic turns may change. In Anarchiv #2, American choreographer DD Dorvillier dances the work of German choreographic partners Kattrin Deufert and Thomas Plischke, rendering these artists’ pieces in her own style.

Ecuadorian Fabián Barba, meanwhile, searches for a new method of staging in A Mary Wigman Dance Evening. Wigman was a groundbreaking modern dancer of 1930s Germany, and Barba attempts to stage some of her works using photos and texts by Wigman – the only surviving sources. Barba admits that the work will not be the original… but can it capture the same essence?

2-13 February
Kaaitheater, Kaaistudio's
and Beursschouwburg
Brussels
www.kaaitheater.be