Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - Rosas

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's solo performance 'Once' premiered at the end of 2002, as the finale to the celebrations around twenty years of Rosas. In 'Once' the choreographer performs an introspective dance to the music of Joan Baez, the most prominent folk singer of the utopian Sixties. De Keersmaeker chose the album 'Joan Baez In Concert Part 2' from 1963, in which Baez recalls her teenage years. The stage presence of this icon of American pacifism was reduced to her crystal-clear soprano voice and the acoustic guitar. The simplicity and directness with which the singer faced her audience are also characteristic of the dance performance: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is alone on stage, eye to eye with the audience, merely accompanied by black vinyl. The record plays ceaselessly, including Baez's connecting texts and the audience applause. Song for song, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker feels out space and movement, at times with hesitation, then again dancing dynamically or along to the vulnerable voice. 'Once' is a moving performance, loaded with assertiveness and melancholy, balanced between posturing and introspection, pride and vulnerability. This is a passionate antidote against despair, a tender incantation against war.