Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Alain Franco/Rosas
> Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker
In 1980, after studying dance at Mudra School in Brussels and Tisch School of the Arts in New York, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (b. 1960) created Asch, her first choreographic work. Two years later came the premiere of Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. De Keersmaeker established the dance company Rosas in Brussels in 1983, while creating the work Rosas danst Rosas. Since these breakthrough pieces, her choreography has been grounded in a rigorous and prolific exploration of the relationship between dance and music. She has created with Rosas a wide-ranging body of work engaging the musical structures and scores of several periods, from early music to contemporary and popular idioms. Her choreographic practice also draws formal principles from geometry, numerical patterns, the natural world, and social structures to offer a unique perspective on the body’s articulation in space and time. In 1995 De Keersmaeker established the school P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels in association with De Munt/La Monnaie.
> Alain Franco (Belgium, 1964) graduated in piano and music theory in Belgium and obtained a post-master degree in XXth century Musicology at the Ircam-Ehess institute of Paris.
His genuine interest for contemporary music and art, both as pianist and conductor, resulted in collaborations with leading ensembles and musicians like Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt), Ictus ensemble (Brussels), the Liege Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lyon Opera Orchestra, the Chamber Music Ensemble of La Monnaie (Brussels) and the Oh Ton ensemble (Oldenburg).
In addition to that – and as an aesthetic and artistic extension to his practice - he progressively developed an original and overall reflection on representation and Performance.
This lead to artistic collaborations with performers, choreographers and theater directors such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Meg Stuart, Thomas Plischke, Kattrin Deufert, Jan Lauwers, Romeo Castellucci, Isabelle Schad, Benjamin Vandewalle, Arkadi Zaides, Daniel Linehan and Karim Bel Kacem.