Sadler’s Wells International Associate Company Rosas returns to Sadler’s Wells Theatre with the UK premiere of EXIT ABOVE from Tuesday 12 – Wednesday 13 November. In EXIT ABOVE, acclaimed Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker explores walking as a primary form of movement, and the tension between marching together and stepping out alone. As a soundtrack to this exploration, De Keersmaeker returns to the roots of Western pop and blues music.
The starting point for the performance is the song “Walking Blues” by legendary blues artist Robert Johnson. The journey then leads back to Der Wanderer by Schubert, the best-known composer of the 19th century. Meskerem Mees, an upcoming Flemish singer songwriter with Ethiopian roots performs other variations of ‘walking songs’, composed together with Jean-Marie Aerts, sound architect of TC Matic, and with dancer and guitarist Carlos Garbin.
In EXIT ABOVE, walking as primal motion and the blues as musical source meet. Choreographically, De Keersmaeker takes the simplest of movements and adds her signature layers of complexity, using precise geometrical patterns. EXIT ABOVE explores the tension between romantic solitary ‘wandern’ (wandering) and the political potential of a group of unarmed people walking together, the individual and the collective, the line and the circle.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker founded Rosas in 1983 in Belgium. Her choreographic practice draws its formal principles from geometry, numerical patterns, the natural world, and social structures and is grounded in a rigorous exploration of the relationship between dance and music.
Rosas is a Sadler’s Wells International Associate Company
BSL interpreted post-show talk with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Sir Alistair Spalding on Tuesday 12 November 2024.
