EXIT ABOVE - after the tempest
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Meskerem Mees, Jean-Marie Aerts, Carlos Garbin / Rosas
For EXIT ABOVE, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker retraces her steps: to the roots of dance, the roots of Western pop music
Since her earliest work, my walking is my dancing is one of her guiding principles: walking as a primary form of movement, so familiar that we hardly stop to think about it. The starting point for the performance is the song Walking Blues by legendary blues artist Robert Johnson. Together with Jean-Marie Aerts (T.C. Matic) and dancer-guitarist Carlos Garbin, singer songwriter Meskerem Mees will compose a series of variations, permutations, and other adaptations of walking songs.
In EXIT ABOVE, walking as primal motion and the blues as musical source meet. Choreographically, De Keersmaeker always moves from organically opening up simple movement material toward spatial and physical complexity, using precise geometrical patterns. EXIT ABOVE explores the tension between marching together and stepping out, 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. The act of walking runs counter to the hegemony of functionality and efficiency.