"D'un soir un jour is een voorstelling die de toeschouwer ten volle laat genieten van de diversiteit en capaciteit van de dansers van het gezelschap Rosas en de competentie van het live orkest. Het is een oog- en zinnenstrelende dansavond die het rijke decor van de Muntschouwburg tegelijk spiegelt en vervolmaakt."
Elke Van Campenhout - De Standaard - 19/05/06

"Wervelend en virtuoos"
Hans-Maarten Post - Het Nieuwsblad - De Gentenaar - Het Volk 19/05 /06

"Bloedmooi en sensueel"
Peter Haex - Gazet Van Antwerpen- 19/05/06

"Avec "D'un soir un jour", Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker livre un spectacle plein de surprises, de rêverie, de menace suspendue, de sensualité, de désirs inassouvis..."
Jean-Marie Wynants - Le Soir - 19/05/06

"So leicht, verspielt, witzig, erotisch, aber auch so raffiniert und mit Anspielungen gespickt war noch kein Stück von Rosas."
Wiebke Hüster -  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - 20/05/07

"Une mouvance vivante, en six tableaux qui, si çà et là ils frisent la redite ou souffrent de froideur, recèlent aussi des élans surprenants, voire de joyeux clins d'oeil."
Marie Baudet - La Libre Belgique - 23/05/06

"a special bravo is due to all the dancers."
Luisa Moffett - The Bulletin - 25/06/06

"En repensant des répertoires, dans un décor minimal, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker se regarde, comme en attestent les projecteurs et redynamise son écriture chorégraphique avec bonheur."
Isabelle Danto-  Figaro-  01/06/06

"Une gifle artistique que cette soirée D'un soir un jour chorégraphiée par Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker ! Eblouissante d'un bout à l'autre avec une aura d'enchantement, cette pièce, présentée au Théâtre de la Ville, puis à Montpellier, est l'ultime signée par l'artiste flamande dans le cadre de sa résidence au Théâtre de la Monnaie de Bruxelles. Elle s'affirme comme une étape majeure de son parcours et le tremplin de futures péripéties fructueuses.
[...] D'un soir un jour fait palpiter le vertige qu'est la vie en inoculant un merveilleux poison : celui de la beauté."
Rosita Boisseau, Le Monde, 01/06/06

"D'un soir un jour, la dernière création de De Keersmaeker, est un chef-d'œuvre [...] une étape essentielle dans son cheminement."
Daniel Conrod -  Télérama - 21/06/06

“Avec D’un soir un jour, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker livre une soirée pleine de surprises, de rêverie, de menace suspendue, d’humour, de sensualité, de désirs inassouvis… Plus que jamais, sa danse colle á la musique explorant les univers de Debussy, Stravinski et George Benjamin. Un spectacle aux atmosphères changeantes mais qui parvient toujuors à combiner une rigueur absolue à une sensibilité à fleur de peau.”
Jean-Marie Wynants - Le Soir - 22/11/06

“Choreografe Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker wil dat de toeschouwer bij de voorstellingen van haar Brusselse gezelschap Rosas naar dans ‘luistert’ en muziek ‘ziet. In de kusnten vormen muziek en dans tenslotte het beste huwelijk; een verbintenis waarin wederzijdse sensaties en intenties kunnen worden verdiept en versterkt. In ‘D’un soir un jour’ legt De Keersmaeker op geraffineerde en ongekend speelse wijze de relatie bloot in zes dansstukken die hoewel onderling heel verschillend, muzikaal en choreografisch nauw zijn verbonden. (…) Het huwelijk tussen muziek en dans is bezegeld en De Keersmaeker draagt de ring.”
Sander Hiskemuller - Trouw - 19/01/07
 
“Het resultaat is een bloedmooie sensuele voorstelling, die stevig geworteld is in de geschiedenis van de hedendaagse dans.”
Sander Hiskemuller - Trouw - 19/01/07
 
“Het resultaat is een bloedmooie sensuele voorstelling, die stevig geworteld is in de geschiedenis van de hedendaagse dans. (…) Tijdens de vier minuten durende adrenalinestoot die Fireworks van Stravinsky is, slaan de golven energie die de dansers opwekken de toeschouwers met verstomming. Knap.”
Wanatoe - Het Belang van Limburg, 24/05/06
 
“D’un soir un jour’ is een voorstelling die de toeschouwer ten volle laat genieten van de diversiteit en capaciteit van de dansers van het gezelschap Rosas en de competentie van het live orkest. Het is een oog- en zinnestrelende dansavond (…).”
Elke van Campenhout - De Standaard - 19/05/2006
 
“Impérieuse et évanescente comme un rêve, D’un soir un jour porte à son faîte le talent d’Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker à deux niveau au moins: son rapport souverain avec la musique et la richesse de son vocabulaire chorégraphique. Elle injecte également dans son redoutable savoir- faire des particules de fragilité qui dissolvent imperceptiblement ses tracés spectaculaires habituels.”
Rosita Boisseau - Le Monde - 02/07/06

Under the title D’un soir un jour, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker combines six short choreographic episodes in an exceptionally rich musical journey that starts and ends with the music of Claude Debussy. At the core of this choreographic and musical voyage are two compositions, one of which was created for Rosas by the contemporary British composer George Benjamin, which are in their turn preceded and followed by short pieces by Debussy’s contemporary Igor Stravinsky. Six opportunities to share in De Keersmaeker’s unceasing obsession with the relationship between pure movement and music.
 
1. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Claude Debussy
This ten-minute composition, written in 1894 and inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, is generally considered a key work in modern music. In 1912 the then 23-year-old dancer Vaslav Nijinsky created a legendary piece of choreography for the work. The poem, the music and the choreography each turned out, within their own discipline, to redefine the prevailing laws of good taste, thus giving rise to much controversy.
L’après-midi d’un faune (1876) is a long poem that blurs the boundary between reality and imagination in a supremely subtle manner: a faun wonders whether the two nymphs that slipped through his fingers were an illusion or not. A dream I hold dear? His wish is to perpetuate the nymphs, make the fleeting moment persist, sustain the longing. Did it happen or didn’t it?
The earthliness that wants to be transcended, the unaccomplished, desire: just as in Mallarmé’s poetry, in Debussy’s composition the impossibility of this yearning is felt not so much through the medium of vague impressionism but in an extraordinarily precise form and sensual concreteness. The evocation of the natural paradise has an incredible sensuality and the music is a sublime caress.
This lightness, modesty and transparency, the search for the greatest possible precision in order to formulate the greatest possible elusiveness, all these were also the foundation for De Keersmaeker’s choreography for three dancers. With a warm-hearted detachment they perfectly incorporate the elegance of the longing in Debussy’s music.
This choreographic episode is preceded by a silent prelude, a quotation that is a tribute to Nijinsky, whose 1912 choreography has been preserved in the form of a written score and studied by De Keersmaeker and her company. The angular poses Nijinsky created for Debussy’s music, with their extreme formality, and the subdued concentration of his positions, reminiscent of the perfection of classical statues, reappear as an echo in De Keersmaeker’s choreography. A respectful meeting of past and present.
 
2. Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky wrote this 9-minute composition in 1920 as a tribute, on the death of his friend Claude Debussy. He himself called it a set of short litanies, in which various homogeneous groups of instruments alternate with each other and combine vehemence with indulgence. Fumiyo Ikeda’s playfully resolute dance in silence forms the transition from Debussy’s languid longing and lightness to Stravinsky’s wilfulness and restlessness. Serene, primitive litanies follow shrill, piercing sounds. A mournful brass band passes by somewhere. With great seriousness and restrained passion dancers circle around each other in spirals to the music’s whirling gusts of wind. Cynthia Loemij’s movements express a longing for verticality and transcendence that is repeatedly defeated. Against her better judgement she is held horizontal in the air, until in the end she lies down as if in a tomb, giving in to the ultimate death scene in Stravinsky’s music.
 
3. Dance Figures, George Benjamin
The British George Benjamin, one of the last pupils of Olivier Messiaen, is among the most prominent composers of contemporary music. At the request of Bernard Foccroulle and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, he wrote a major composition, called Dance Figures, for symphony orchestra, an exceptional challenge both for him and the choreographer. It comprises nine short movements, often related to one another and characterised by sharp contrasts of nature, form and tone. We encounter vague traces of such great models as Stravinsky and Debussy. De Keersmaeker sees it as a challenge to make accessible Benjamin’s quite abstract composition, which uses the orchestra to the full, through the medium of dance. She has created a group choreography focusing on stillness and movement, transience and elusiveness, on the subtle line between narration and abstract form: "In his composition, Benjamin has taken account of what he knew about my work. In my turn I am now looking for a line parallel to his. While entirely respecting his score, I am looking for a clear, transparent language of movement where the composition is dense, and for greater complexity where the music opts for simplicity."
 
[Interval]
 
4. Ringed by the Flat Horizon, George Benjamin
An earlier piece by Benjamin, written in 1980 for a full orchestra and dedicated to Olivier Messiaen, this is a second musical challenge for a 20-minute group choreography. The composer was inspired by a dramatic photo of a breathtaking storm over the desert in New Mexico and a few almost apocalyptic lines from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, where this work’s title also originates. As if in a silent trance, the music and choreography carry us along on the movement of the wind as it blows over endless plains, rises and then drops again, concentrating into a whirlwind and breaking apart again, speeding up and slowing down, powerfully lifting us and then once more subsiding. A stirring experience enhanced even more by the restless play of light and shadow, and the dusty sand that since the beginning of the evening has risen from the floor of the stage as the dancers moved: forming a transparent curtain of light mist and evaporating water in Debussy’s paradise landscape, rising sand in Benjamin’s desert.
 
5. Fireworks, Igor Stravinsky
After the stillness of the faded storm, we are startled by the exuberance of Stravinsky’s Fireworks, an explosion of energy lasting 4 minutes. Stravinsky wrote this short piece at the start of the 20th century for the wedding of a composer-friend’s daughter. The tables on stage serve as a catwalk for the dancers, driven by excitement and all decked out, who indulge themselves playfully to the driving power of the music. The dominating colour is red, taking its place in the rich spectrum of colour, including gold, white, yellow and green, with which D’un soir un jour accentuates its polyphony and wealth of musical and choreographic material.
 
6. Jeux, Claude Debussy
Claude Debussy composed Jeux on the eve of the First World War. It was commissioned by Les Ballets Russes and was based on an idea of Nijinsky’s, who was fascinated by the movements of tennis players. For the first time, movements from everyday life were stylised and transformed into choreography, consisting of frozen frescos characteristic of Nijinsky’s choreographic language.
A tennis ball vanishes in a park at twilight. A young man and two young women go in search of it, a pretext for a subtle game of seduction: they stop, chase, whisper and flirt, ending in light touches, a kiss, almost a flirtation à trois, with homosexual connotations.
As a result of negative reactions to its form and content, the piece was immediately dropped, to be revived only in 1996 by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer at the Teatro Filarmonico Verona, in a reconstruction based on the scenario, photos, drawings, press reviews and the accounts of people who worked on it at the time. Hodson was also involved in the creative process for D’un soir un jour, for Rosas an unparalleled opportunity.
Debussy’s masterly evocation of the faun caught between dream and reality is matched in Jeux: the subtle rhythm, the harmony that borders on tonality, the freedom and asymmetry of form, all express an inimitable lyrical intensity. With precision and contained passion, the Rosas dancers express in duos and trios the discrete game of seduction in the languid twilight. The various currents of energy, upwards and downwards, open and closing again, horizontal and vertical, entangling and disentangling, natural and almost scientifically precise, here reach their culmination. Until an azure-blue cloth heralds the darkness: D’un soir un jour. From Mallarmé’s proud silence of the midday sun to the half-light of Debussy’s suggestive game of tennis. An azure darkness, pregnant with unfulfilment.
 
Sigrid Bousset
(translation: Gregory Ball)

No future dates for this production.