Rosas

Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s very first performance, premiered in 1982. Fase comprises three duets and one solo, choreographed to four repetitive compositions by the American minimalist Steve Reich. De Keersmaeker uses the structure of Reich’s music to develop an independent movement idiom that doesn’t merely illustrate the music but also adds a new dimension to it. Both the music and the dance start from the principle of phase shifting through tiny variations: movements that are initially perfectly synchronous gradually start slipping and sliding, resulting in an ingenious play of continuously changing forms and patterns.

Her solo Violin Phase is the third of the four movements this piece consists of: De Keersmaeker moves in circular patterns with strict repetitions of a single turning, twisting phrase that brilliantly plays off the music’s formalism and drama.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker wrote Violin Phase at the Dance Department of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The solo premiered during the Festival of Early Modern Dance in Purchase, NY, in April 1981.