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<\/a>Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in a performance of her Partita 2<\/em> in Avignon. At back: violinist Amandine Beyer. Photo: \u00a9 Anne Van Aerschot<\/p><\/div>\n Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker\u2019s Brussels-based company, Rosas, last performed in New York in 2013, when the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented her En Attendant<\/em> and Cesena. <\/em>Several years before, the two stunning pieces, featuring singers and instrumentalists as well as dancers, had premiered in Avignon, and there the selections of medieval music had resonated in the ancient Cloister of the Celestines (En Attendant<\/em>) and in an amphitheater connected with the palace occupied by the Pope during the years of the Papal Schism (Cesena<\/em>).<\/p>\n Also in 2013, this profoundly fascinating choreographer made one of her smallest works: a duet for herself and French choreographer-performer Boris Charmatz, set to Johann Sebastian Bach\u2019s Partita No.2 in D minor<\/em> (1720). The word \u201cduet\u201d is accurate, but also misleading. In the performances that were part of Lincoln Center\u2019s White Light Festival, the superb violinist Amandine Beyer played onstage the movements that make up Bach\u2019s suite of dances (Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, and Chaconne). So: a trio.<\/p>\n In fact, call De Keersmaeker\u2019s Partita 2<\/em> a quartet. It begins with a door opening on one side of the Gerald W. Lynch Theater in John Jay College, and the resultant beam of light from the wings lays a diagonal avenue across the stage. Beyer walks in, reaches a spot in the center of the space, and the door closes. In darkness we sit and listen while she plays. Hearing an unseen musician is an experience both intense and serene. Uncluttered. Bach is with us. In fact, when, during the dance that follows, De Keersmaeker and Charmatz occasionally pause and gaze into the space directly above their heads, I imagine them checking to see if the composer\u2019s spirit approves.<\/p>\n Boris Charmatz and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in a performance of Partita 2<\/em> in Avignon. Photo: \u00a9 Anne Van Aerschot<\/p><\/div>\n Partita 2<\/em> lasts for 75 intermission-less minutes, while the music can be played in a little over a half-hour. Beyer doesn\u2019t perform all of it to begin with\u2014just the first four movements, which consume under 15 minutes). After the frenzy of the Gigue, she marches off the stage on the opposite side from which she entered and from which De Keersmaeker and Charmatz make their appearance. What we don\u2019t yet know is that they will dance in silence for about a half hour, after which Beyer will reappear and play the entire Partita<\/em> while they dance. So we hear a virtual dance that we cannot see, then see a dance\u2014perhaps remembering the music\u2014and finally absorb them together.<\/p>\n The dance in silence and the dance with music may not be exactly identical, but movements from the first reappear\u2014perhaps varied\u2014in the second. A description on Rosas\u2019 website paraphrases De Keersmaeker (or at least hints at how she thinks about the musical forms in relation to the dance): \u201callemande will make us step, in courante we will run, in sarabande we will fold in various patterns, and the relentless chaconne will let us run in circles jubilantly together!\u201d She understands the structure of Bach\u2019s music and its relation to baroque dance forms better than I do; I only know that her choreography reflects those elements in ways that are deeply sympathetic, yet comradely enough to be playful. In an interview printed in the program, Charmatz spoke of Bach\u2019s architecture as a \u201cmountain that has to be climbed\u201d yet whose summit is in a sense unattainable: \u201cwe are trying, rather, to introduce a \u2018vibration,\u2019 a slight hesitation in the face of the absolute perfection of the music.\u201d<\/p>\n Boris Charmatz and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in Partita 2<\/em>. Photo: \u00a9 Herman Sorgeloos<\/p><\/div>\n They\u2019re an interesting pair. De Keersaeker, now in her fifties, is lean, strong, and slightly severe in manner; Charmatz is younger, bearded, and seems a little more impulsive\u2014puppyish even. Both wear simple black or white clothes by Anne-Catherine Kunz, which they alter during the dance, either removing an over-garment onstage or going offstage to make a slight change. They dance as if intent on a task to be fulfilled\u2014always aware of each other, even when embarking on separate swatches of dancing. And their very truthfulness, not to mention their skill, makes them mesmerizing to watch. Our ears have been primed; now the eyes wake up.<\/p>\n But, of course, we\u2019re still hearing things\u2014possibly replaying Bach in our heads, but more likely aware of the footfalls, the humming the performers occasionally do under their breaths, and the inadvertent sniff or grunt. Walking plays an important part in the dance, just as a walking bass line often figures in the music. De Keersmaeker and Charmatz also run. Perhaps they\u2019re side by side; perhaps one leads and the other follows. Call these motifs. Chalked circles on the floor guide their paths.<\/p>\n But their travels also incorporate pauses and hesitations, and they do much more than walk and run. Charmatz occasionally leaps, bundles himself into a jump, rolls on the floor, or lifts a bent leg high and turned-in. De Keersmaeker, too, moves expansively and athletically. They smartly illustrate their equality when one of them pulls the other up from the floor by a hand, and connected by that grip, they slant apart, counterbalancing each other.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>