De Keersmaeker debuts new production in Berlin

Fase made De Keersmaeker a star in the world of dance, but it turns out that Reich wasn’t the only music she was listening to in the big apple. The one and only other recording playing in the studio where she worked was the Brandenburg Concertos.

Thirty-five years later, she is debuting her production of the same name in Berlin. “Like no other, Bach’s music exudes movement and dance, managing to combine the greatest abstractions with the concrete, physical and, subsequently, transcendental dimension.”

The Brandenburg Concertos consist of six works in which JS Bach deploys the instruments from the baroque orchestra in wholly different, often audacious, combinations. De Keersmaeker’s The Six Brandenburg Concertos features 16 dancers of multiple generations from her company Rosas.

As she has done in previous pieces – some with the music of Bach – she uses Bach’s concertos as if they were composed for dance, embodying the polyphonic mastery. The piece is played live by Brussels-based ensemble B’Rock.

The Six Brandenburg Concertos premieres at Berlin’s Volksbühne on 12 September, where it will run for four days. It then travels to New York’s Park Avenue Armory. It will debut in Belgium at De Munt in January.