Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker traces her sillon

Who could have predicted that little Anne Teresa would one day be one of the most acclaimed choreographers of her generation, and even the leading light of Flemish performing arts? Her story is indeed extraordinary. Anne Teresa was born in the Dutch lands. Her family has been farmers for generations – her grandfather also published an essay on agriculture in Belgium. She should have taken up the torch and the ploughshare herself.

But she encountered dance. She was 8 years old and it was love at first sight. And a stroke of luck: her mother heard her passion. Not only did she enroll her daughter in a class, but she also created a local dance class in the village parish hall with a student from the Ballet of Flanders. “This is what it’s like to have inspiring teachers,” confides the choreographer, full of gratitude for her teacher who opened the doors to her. This is how she discovered, among other things, Pierre and the Wolf by Prokofiev. A few years later, she joined the famous Mudra school founded by Béjart. “A choreographer who had an enormous merit: that of opening a certain dance to the general public.”

However, don’t get this farmer’s daughter started on intensive agriculture. She knows the subject like the back of her hand. She can even become fierce. With a pet peeve: the industrialization of the sector. “It has an impact on our lives, our food, but also on the social structure of our societies, but above all on the dramatic implosion of biodiversity.” She has retained a keen sense of nature. Anne Teresa thinks green. And matches her actions to her views. Thus, she forces her dancers to travel by train when they go on tour.

Et The four Seasons inspire him. “An ode to nature. This music by Vivaldi offers us the beauty of a sunset. » To put this music into dance without falling into paraphrase, she chose four dancers who were as different as they were complementary, “because opposites attract and strengthen each other”. A thinly veiled allusion to politics. Its four performers therefore evolve in very opposing styles, and it is a real symbiosis that it creates with the incredible melodies, played in such an original way by the violinist Amandine Beyer and the Gli Incogniti orchestra.
As always, the Belgian artist took his time to develop this choreography. “In the creative process, I am slow,” she admits. But she does not deviate from her rule: to arrive exactly where she wants to go. She is also said to have an iron will.

Hymns to dance and nature

Dance became her chosen land, but she didn’t take refuge there, like many little girls. She doesn’t remember being introverted as a child. Even if she liked dancing in front of mirrors. “The act of dancing allows other things than expression through words, because it is the connection, through intuition, of instinct and intellect.” She emphasizes her role in “these disrupted societies in which we live; only art can bring us to celebration, consolation and reflection.” As if his Four Seasons were a hymn to hope.

Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker has taken over the leadership of one of the most important artistic institutions in Belgium. It is also understandable that she has obtained significant aid from the State. And has undertaken to build, on the land of her company, Rosas, in the heart of Brussels, studios, so that they allow her dance to survive. But it is creation that remains her preferred tool to make heard, at the same time, her hymn to dance and her hymn to nature. A struggle which, it is said, has instilled in her this precise and sometimes glacial determination.