{"id":6074,"date":"2019-02-03T14:29:11","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T19:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/?p=6074"},"modified":"2019-02-04T06:53:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T11:53:08","slug":"transfigured-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/2019\/02\/transfigured-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Transfigured Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Bo\u0161tjan Anton\u010di\u010d holds Cynthia Loemij in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am always amazed by the dances that Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker creates for her Belgium-based company, Rosas. To begin with, I\u2019m never sure what I\u2019ll see or where I\u2019ll have to go in order to see one of them. Preparing to take in her Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht <\/em>last week, I might well have wondered whether she would perform a solo, like her 1980 Violin Phase<\/em> (incorporated into the four-part Fase<\/em> two years later and revived at the Museum of Modern Art in 2011), or present a duet, such as her Partita 2 <\/em>(2013), a collaboration with Boris Charmatz. I doubted, however, that we\u2019d be seeing a large group piece akin to The Six Brandenburg Concertos<\/em>, which made its U.S. debut in the vast Park Avenue Armory in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

De Keersmaeker\u2019s structures and her ways of re-configuring space and relating to music have always been remarkable. Vortex Temporum <\/em>(2013), seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2016, paired each of seven dancers with one of the seven musicians in the Ictus ensemble. Wherever they were in space, you sensed their connections; you heard<\/em> the dance, you saw <\/em>the music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verkl\u00e4rte Nachte <\/em>(2014) made its U.S. debut this past week in the Jerome Robbins Theater, a black-box space in the Baryshnikov Arts Center\u2014so confined an arena that the three members of Rosas occasionally came within a yard of the spectators in the front row, yet so implicitly unidentifiable as a \u201cplace\u201d that the performers\u2019 every shift of thought or nuanced movement\u2014 clear though these were\u2014seemed mysterious. Verkl\u00e4rte Nachte<\/em> (originally, in 1995, a group work) lasted under an hour, and during that time, we the audience members sat as if in some kind of spiritual bondage, unable to shift in our seats or take our attention off the performers, Bo\u0161tjan Anton\u010di\u010d, Cynthia Loemij, and Igor Shyshko.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some of us, the piece may have awakened memories of Antony Tudor\u2019s great Pillar of Fire<\/em>, created in 1942 for Ballet Theatre. That ballet was performed to the same work by Arnold Schoenberg that infuses De Keersmaeker\u2019s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em> and provides its title, which translates as \u201cTransfigured Night.\u201d  Schoenberg based his music on a poem by Richard Dehmel, a contemporary of his, that tells of a woman who, yearning for motherhood, has had a brief, ill-fated affair. But a man whom she loves and who loves her says these words: \u201cMay the child you conceived\/ Be no burden to your soul.\u201d And: \u201cYou will bear the child for me, as if it were mine.\u201d  The three principal figures in Tudor\u2019s ballet are a desperate, repressed heroine, a kind and faithful suitor, and a sexually vibrant man who frequents a house of ill-repute across the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schoenberg\u2019s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>, Op. 4, composed in 1899, is suffused with late-Romantic passion. At BAC, the dance is performed to a recording by two violinists, two violists, and two cellists of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Boulez. The six, sometimes five, falling notes that begin it are often repeated. Sighing, questioning, soothing, they weave into other melodies, and resurface transformed. Sometimes a single instrument calls out. The sounds may fade away at times or simply drop into silence. You\u2019re aware of the fragility that a solitary violin can convey, the storm that the cellos boil up, and the high notes that jitter excitedly, as if the sun were suddenly coming out from behind clouds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Igor Shyshko and Cynthia Loemij in De Keersmaeker’s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>. Photo Maria Baranova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

De Keersmaeker\u2019s choreography\nestablishes a down-to-earth formal structure. The dancers walk into the\nperforming area from the downstage left corner and, when they\u2019ve finished what\nthey came for, walk out on the same path. The work begins in silence. Loemij is\ncaught and lifted by Shyshko. When they move in unison, they might be playing a\ngame that implies a test (\u201ccan you do this?\u201d). But they aren\u2019t together for\nlong. She collapses; grasping her upper arms, he raises her slightly up from\nthe floor and holds her there for what seems a very long time. Then they\nrecompose themselves and walk out of sight. Almost immediately, they file in\nagain, this time with Anton\u010di\u010d. The men are garbed in dark suits and white\nshirts\u2014no ties; Loemij wears a short, loosely fitting pink dress, spottily\nornamented with flowers, plus disks that appear to contain letters of the\nalphabet. All three are barefoot. Now you see Anton\u010di\u010d duplicate the way Shysko\nlifted Loemiji and watch both men execute Shyshko\u2019s phrase of movement. When\nLoemij falls, Anton\u010di\u010d raises her partly from the floor\u2014just as, yet unlike\nhow, Shyshko did this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cynthis Loemij in Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

They exit, and this time only Loemij and Anton\u010di\u010d re-enter. Now comes the deepest, most disturbing sequence of the work, and shortly after it begins, Schoenberg\u2019s plangent music begins its questions. Anton\u010di\u010d stands at the back of the area, facing away from both his partner and us on a slight diagonal. The lighting design by Luc Shaltin and De Keersmaeker creates a place that is dark around the edges, so he appears somehow distant, neutralized. Neutral? No, more like unknowable. Or standing in for an imagined person. For a long time, he doesn\u2019t move, but I could swear that he\u2019s listening to her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over and over, she approaches him from behind. Is it that she wants him to turn to her?\u00a0 Or that she wants to remember him, as if time has temporarily stopped? She comes up to him tentatively\u2014 sometimes so close that she could be inhaling his scent\u2014then falls away, then tries\u00a0 again. And again. And again. De Keersmaeker\u2019s choreography doesn\u2019t call attention to itself as virtuosity\u2014with the exception of one move of Loemij’s: she steps out onto half toe and lifts one bent leg high to the side, even as she\u2019s falling out of this potential peak moment. She runs, tumbles silently to the floor, rolls, rises, falls. I imagine a prolonged gasp. She pulls up her dress a bit or presses it roughly down. One particular step recurs over and over, like the cries in the music. She squats low and awkwardly, feet apart, bent forward, her head hanging, and her right arm extended with the palm of her hand facing up. Her longing for something seems to have condensed into that one hand, blindly waiting for what may come. Now the music begins with its questions, its surges, its deep notes that seem to call out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally\nAnton\u010di\u010d turns and begins to move.  Like\nLoemij, he can appear to be lifted and flung about by his own feelings. When\nhe\u2019s in the downstage right corner, he reaches offstage with one arm, but\nwithout apparent desire. The music gets fierce, even thunderous, and she races\nto him and jumps onto him. This is no conventional lift. Her legs are bent\ndouble and pressed against his chest. She does this more than once. The two of\nthem dance side by side or run on a diagonal, passing each other. Sometimes he\nseems to snatch her out of her path. But also, when she falls into that clumsy\nsquat, he instantly and smoothly, without stopping his own dancing, unwinds her\nout of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cynthia Loemij and Bo\u0161tjan Anton\u010di\u010d in Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht<\/em>. Photo: Maria Baranova<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Briefly I wonder what has happened to Shyshko. Was he simply a brief, awkward chapter in this woman\u2019s life? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\npeople are superb and nuanced movers. Loemij is close fifty years old, lean and\nstrong, yet she conveys a frail, almost girlish sensitivity. She can be steely\none moment and as boneless as a rag doll at another.  No glamorous stage makeup for her. Anton\u010di\u010d\nappears solidly built in his dark suit, but he\u2019s as free in his moves as she\nis; like a feral lion, he can seem deceptively soft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, in an almost business-like way, he takes off his jacket and tosses it aside. It seems less that he\u2019s hot and wants to cool down and more as if he\u2019s discarding a piece of armor.\u00a0 He wilts slightly; she catches him. She places one hand to support his head as he begins to fall. She holds his cheeks when they\u2019re both leaning over and all but pulls him up straighter. He can lift her horizontally, and spin with her, but he also embarks on movements that I recall her doing. When she runs one last time into that folded-up lift, he carefully pushes one of her legs down again, just before he folds up his discarded jacket. For a few minutes, they lie side by side, spoon fashion. When he arises and she stays curled up, he covers her with the jacket. But as the music becomes more and more impassioned, they roll and rise and run almost crazily. Then they \u201csleep\u201d again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\none last wild moment, she\u2019s curled up on his shoulders. Then she quietly walks\naway. He revisits some of his steps, his thoughts. But on the last quiet notes\nof the music, he\u2019s walking toward us. And just before he reaches us, the lights\ngo out. Did he plan to ask us something, or was he just setting out on a voyage\nalone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audience applauds furiously, stands and cheers for the three dancers. We\u2019ve seen an ordeal that in about an hour seems both to condense and to enrich what we ourselves may experience as, over the years, we negotiate the rigors of life. How do we approach love, how yield to it? Mysteries we expect never to solve. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am always amazed by the dances that Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker creates for her Belgium-based company, Rosas. To begin with, I\u2019m never sure what I\u2019ll see or where I\u2019ll have to go in order to see one of them. Preparing to take in her Verkl\u00e4rte Nacht last week, I might well have wondered whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[963,3118,2610,2613,2609,3119],"class_list":{"0":"post-6074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-anne-teresa-de-keersmaeker","8":"tag-arnold-schoenberg","9":"tag-bostjan-antoncic","10":"tag-cynthia-loemij","11":"tag-igor-shyshko","12":"tag-richard-dehmel","13":"entry","14":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6074"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6091,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6074\/revisions\/6091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/dancebeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}