Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Meskerem Mees
Jean-Marie Aerts
Carlos Garbin
Rosas EXIT ABOVE
d’après la tempête

Creating a harmony between past and present, blues melancholy, romantic wandering and collective impulse of walking, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker brings us a hyphen-shaped piece, in which dance weaves together the different musical genres and eras.

Robert Johnson’s nomadic blues is synonymous with movement and wandering, but also rhythm, that of the chord progressions and cadence of this musical form born in the Mississippi delta, and which influenced XX^th century rock and pop music. Following in the steps of Robert Johnson, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker brings us a piece the shape of which signifies a return to origins, in this case those of song, but also dance. Between the walking blues and the "my walking is my dancing" motif, a basic principle behind all of her choreographic constructions, there is more than just plain analogy. Indeed, we find a deep-seated relationship with the expressive power of the simplest of aesthetic elements. Weaving in the metaphor of the footstep, collective walk and individual sidestep, she links together the different musical eras and genres, ranging from Franz Schubert’s lied  to the American bluesman ballads. In order to bring into the present these melodic fragments, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker turns to the musician Meskerem Mees, whose voice maps out different musical heritages. As the various cover versions and variations play out, so too are the encounters between the romantic Wanderer and the Afro-American vagabond.