Golden Hours (As you like it)

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Rosas

The twin title — Golden Hours or As you like it — uncovers a theater play in a dance, a meeting between Brian Eno’s album Another Green World and Shakespeares queer comedy As You Like it, a playabout an idyllic golden world of the Forest of Arden into which lovers flee from a corrupt court. 

What happens when the speaking in Shakespeare’s rhythms and poetic imagery becomes dancing, or turns into movements, steps and gestures, as well as intentionality and attention emanating from the thinking bodies? How is listening to a talking-dancing partner, who nonetheless remains mute and wordless, embodied?  A plot of gazes, hands and feet sticking out of enamored bodies unfolds an enchanted world of characters and their whimsical manners. For this performance, De Keersmaeker explores a cast of eleven young dancers sparking their idiosyncratic movement expressions in a rich, colorful and energetic dancing palette. Striking a delicate balance between formal abstraction and concrete gesture, they dance their intricate entanglements through and through, their masquerade and games of seduction, attraction, repulsion, misunderstanding and silliness. One is absorbed by the intensity and sensuality of a bright but gently ironic world whose language doesn’t need deciphering to be grasped, yet isn’t pantomime.

Choreography    
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Created with and performed by
Aron Blom, Linda Blomqvist, Tale Dolven, Carlos Garbin, Tarek Halaby, Mikko Hyvönen, Veli Lehtovaara, Sandra Ortega Bejarano, Elizaveta Penkova, Georgia Vardarou, Sue-Yeon Youn

Music   
Another Green World (1975), Brian Eno

Arrangements
Carlos Garbin     

Artistic advice       
Ann Veronica Janssens

Dramaturgical advice 
Bojana Cvejić 

Lighting design    
Luc Schaltin

Costumes
Anne-Catherine Kunz

Sound
Alexandre Fostier     

Production   
Rosas

Coproduction    
De Munt / La Monnaie (Brussel/Bruxelles), Kaaitheater (Brussel/Bruxelles), Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Sadler’s Wells (London), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Opéra de Lille, Ruhrtriennale, Concertgebouw Brugge, Festival Montpellier Danse 2015

Premiere
23.01.2015, Kaaitheater (Brussel/Bruxelles)