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IMPRESSIONS: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's “The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988” at NYU Skirball

Choreography and Dance: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker 

Music: Johann Sebastian Bach, The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

Piano: Pavel Kolesnikov | Musical Collaboration: Alain Franco | Choreographic Assistant: Diane Madden

Set and Lighting Design: Minna Tiikkainen | Sound: Alban Moraud | Assistant to the Artistic Director: Martine Lange | Artistic Coordination and Planning: Anne Van Aerschot | Technical Director: Thomas Verachtert |  Technical Coordinator: Thomas Verachtert | Costumes Coordinator: Alexandra Verschueren, assisted by Els Van Buggenhout  //  Sewing: Emmanuelle Erhart  //  Wardrobe: Alexandra Verschueren //  Technician: Jan Balfoort  //  Production: Rosas  //  Coproduction:Wiener Festwochen, Concertgebouw (Bruges), De Munt / La Monnaie (Brussels), Théâtre de la Ville à Paris – Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), Internationaal Theater Amsterdam / Julidans, Sadler’s Wells (London), Montpellier Danse

World Premiere: August 26, 2020 at Wiener Festwochen

Performance Dates: February 22 - 24, 2024

Special thanks to Takeshi Sakai, Anke Loh, Kees Van Houten, Leen Decin, Cynthia Loemij, Jacob Storer

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Goldberg

the artist’s Everest

a labyrinthine enigma of startling clarity

a gauntlet for the hands

a trance for the ears

a delight for the dancing body

infinite possibility in its sprawl and tangle

including nothing

nothing is always an option

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

somehow Goldberg will never be like other oft-used musics

it is limitless

almost achingly so

an impossibility worth every effort of possibling

even nothing

nothing is always an option

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d like to ask the others why

Jerome Robbins might look down his nose at me

Pam Tanowitz might shrug a small smile

would that I could have asked Steve Paxton

given our shared affinity for the Glenn Gould of it all

I’ve played this recording over and over now

I’m listening to it now

it’s got two scratches where it skips

(in variations two and eight)

I ever so gently advance the needle ever just barely

to the next smooth groove

an error of materiality

mars flawless immateriality

maybe

like these artists

I want to know every note

but most of all

I want to know what it’s like to make them

to play them

with hands alone

or body in full

but I keep wandering off

I keep getting lost

and I wonder how many more times until I know

and I think

Anne Teresa wonders the same

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

when to dance feels absurd

contrived in the face of something so baroque 

that still somehow puts contrivance to shame

like Goldberg is sprung naturally from the cosmos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and then

when to dance feels absurd

contrived in the face of yourself

when you’ve danced a lifetime and realize

there’s no way you’ll ever reach the end of dancing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but still you try

on a bare stage

the piano

the floor

the aria

the variations

(hands spine arms knees ribs hips feet)

until and beyond

the aria’s inevitable return

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

get lost

get found

frame up

float off

slice a soft vertical

hang in bloom

swing a phrase under

swing another over

hop skip slide

kick and flip

scurry and cavort

bound and dash and whirl and teeter

live in mistakes

in risk and recovery

there are no mistakes

only momentum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

meanwhile

(all the while)

(or most of the while)

dancing hand over hand over hand over hand

lush and languid

never frantic

a most friendly fugue

an exquisite haunting

reverence and humor pour from his hands

bare feet on the pedals

it all carries an air of spontaneity

a calculated careening

meticulously planned

vertiginously plunged

rapturously alive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

she dances in and out of the reflected light of herself

off a silver foil like sail or screen or mirror or or or

a reflection changed with time

its origin unchanged

it passes across and over

like a celestial body

crawls a corner up the wall

flattens itself

squares its obliquities

rests on the piano

and vanishes

into nothing

nothing, the eternal option

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

below the surface

in a dream

every note pushes out and lingers

every movement leaves its trace

their instruments strew them about

pick them back up

hold them and drop them again

subatomic particles build elemental forms

like anything

like everything

reflections in the dark

dancing with her shadow

almost like you’d expect it to dance of its own accord

still and always

presence and unpresence move as one

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

how silly and sacred to spend a life dancing

navigating with assurance

meandering unmoored

in a muted dream

in a ringing rhythmic field

in a chaos of perfect order

anything is possible

everything could be

and still nothing

nothing is always an option

 

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