Concept
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Jérôme Bel

Music
Gustav Mahler Der Abschied / Das Lied von der Erde
transcription / bewerking / transcription Arnold Schoenberg

Conductor
Georges-Elie Octors

Dance
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Mezzo
Sara Fulgoni / Ursula Hesse von den Steinen (Amsterdam, Helsinki, Breda, Hamburg)

Piano
Jean-Luc Fafchamps

Ictus

Assistant
Anne Van Aerschot

Internship
Maxime Kurvers

Production Co-ordonation
Johan Penson assisted by Tom Van Aken

Technicians
Davy Deschepper, Bardia Mohammad

Thanks to
Lucy Grauman (voice)
David Hernandez (dance)
Eugénie De Mey, Anne-Catherine Kunz, Rita Poelvoorde, Herman Sorgeloos, Christophe Wavelet, Piano’s Maene

Production
Rosas

Coproduction 
La Monnaie /De Munt (Brussels), Opéra de Lille, Sadler’s Wells (London), Theater an der Wien, Théâtre de la Ville avec le Festival d’Automne à Paris, Hellerau European Center for the Arts Dresden.

In collaboration with
Ictus & R.B. Jérôme Bel
Only the last part of our “Song of the Earth” remains, the Abschied, the Farewell. This long, mysterious and gripping song - its complexity, which is not only musical but also semantic, is at stake in our attempt at performing it. The question that concerns us is how to do justice, choreographically and theatrically, to Mahler’s work. How to render in dance the wisdom and the quietude in the face of the ineluctable expressed in so masterly a fashion in Mahler’s composition? We will not be alone in seeking to answer this question. Our musician colleagues will be challenged to help us to give form to the disturbing feeling which seizes us when we hear the work. At the risk of failure or ridicule, we will throw ourselves into the music beyond our physical limits. We will strive, even at the risk of repeating ourselves (as the title indicates), to exhaust the work, which of course will resist us. But, like (the personage of) Mahler in the face of death, we are afraid of nothing

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Jerome Bel - Oct 2008