30. Piano Phase – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

19.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas (BE)

Piano Phase

1982
Extract from the movie Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich
Directed by Thierry De Mey
Danced by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Michèle Anne De Mey
21’10’’

Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s very first performance, premiered in 1982. Fase comprises three duets and one solo, choreographed to four repetitive compositions by the American minimalist Steve Reich.

The duet Piano Phase is the first of the four movements this piece consists of. De Keersmaeker uses the structure of Reich’s music to develop an independent movement idiom that does not merely illustrate the music but also gives it an extra dimension

Both the music and the dance start from the principle of phase shifting: through tiny variations, movements that are initially perfectly synchronous gradually start slipping and sliding, resulting in an ingenious play of continuously changing forms and patterns

In physics and mathematics, a phase shift is the difference between the phases of two periodic signals, indicating the delay between those signals. When this difference is zero, the two signals are said to be in phase, otherwise they are out of phase with each other.

Phase shifting is just one of the many mathematical concepts used by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in her choreographies.

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