Choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is nothing if not complicated. In an 18-minute YouTube video posted in 2013, she gave an extensive explanation of the sources and structures for just the second movement (of four) in her seminal female quartet, “Rosas danst Rosas” (1983).
That 19-minute section — the chair section, using just the upper body — was also the one Beyonce allegedly plagiarized in her 2011 music video “Countdown.” You can see why: Within the confines of De Keersmaeker’s complex structures, the movement is often abandoned, sensual.
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Now, as part of a U.S. tour, De Keersmaeker brings her troupe, Rosas, from Belgium to the Museum of Contemporary Art to perform the physically and mentally challenging “Rosas.” As part of the Oct.9-12 run, she’ll give two artist’s talks and, before the Sunday matinee, sign books about the making and nature of her work.
In 1999, Rosas’ performance at the MCA of “Drumming” (1998) revealed the major effects possible in a minimalist work. Like that piece, “Rosas danst Rosas” (“Roses Dances Roses”) combines “intense physicality with rigorous, near-mathematical structures,” De Keersmaeker says. In a process that recalls Twyla Tharp’s when she created “The Fugue” (1970), De Keersmaeker purposely limited her resources in “Rosas,” using just four dancers and, at least in the highly restricted chair sequence, devising a simple single phrase with five elements, which she then cut up, recombined and inflected.
“Rosas” is one of four early pieces, De Keersmaeker says, that “hold a lot of the basic elements that became the key points of my choreographic language: strong structural devices, intense physicality and provoking a kind of emotional layer.” Asked whether she sees any disconnect between formal devices and emotion, she replies, “I never separate those things. I think form has an emotion: A circle carries a different emotional feeling than a square.”
At the time “Rosas” was made, De Keersmaeker was also working on “duration.” The 45-minute first section, she notes, is performed in silence, and “the movement has a certain notion of recitative, like laying down, then stepping and turning, including daily life gestures.” (Later sections are set to Thierry De Mey’s percussive score, created for “Rosas.”)
De Keersmaeker adds that “because the ’80s were a time of punk, there was a kind of … I won’t say provocation, but confrontation. The extreme physicality combined with extreme repetition — there’s a kind of image of women who throw themselves against the wall of structure.”
Asked whether “Rosas” is a feminist work, De Keersmaeker responds with a decisive “no.” Instead, she says, she made it for four women “because I wanted to keep the physicality close to myself.”
Still, she acknowledges it might be a “female” work.
“The vocabulary is less abstract, for example, than in ‘Fase’ (which preceded ‘Rosas’),” De Keersmaeker says. “There is a slight dramaturgy to the piece, which is really anchored on the following of day, starting with the night, then morning, afternoon, evening.”
There’s no narrative, but she recognizes the influence of its four original dancers and of repetition and variation: “What is different? What is the same? It’s a crucial device, a framework. It’s like a light sense of melodrama, like unspoken theatrical.”
Few women choreographers have attained De Keersmaeker’s prominence, but she has no particular views on women’s role in the dance world. She does say, with a laugh, that she thinks there’s a shift toward “men starting to dance, and women going into politics.”
The choreographer won’t comment on the 2011 Beyonce brouhaha. But “Re:Rosas!” — the online copycat video project she created on the company website, inviting people to learn the steps and record their performances — is still going strong, with 287 videos to date.
“It was a nice way to celebrate the 30th birthday of the making of ‘Rosas danst Rosas,'” De Keersmaeker says.
Also worth noting
Out of Site: Ginger Krebs and Sara Zalek present “Emergency Response Team,” described as “highlighting the way public anxiety is increasingly ‘managed’ as a public relations exercise.” 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday at the intersection of Division Street and Milwaukee and Ashland Avenues; free, outofsitechicago.org
Onye Ozuzu and Peggy Choy: The two present “River-Mouth-Ocean: Explorations in Afro-Asian Futurism,” an investigation of “cultural survival, environmental justice and hybrid identities.” 7 p.m. Oct. 10-12 at Links Hall, 3111 N. Western Ave.; $10 at 773-281-0824 or linkshall.org
‘Rosas danst Rosas’
When: 7:30 p.m. Oct. 9-11, 3 p.m. Oct. 12
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave.
Tickets: $28 at 312-397-4010 or mcachicago.org
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