Rosas

For the first time since the premiere in May 2023, EXIT ABOVE will be presented in Brussels! 
We are celebrating the 100th performance at the Ancienne Belgique. 

For EXIT ABOVE, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker retraces her steps: to the roots of dance, the roots of Western pop music. Since her earliest work, ‘my walking is my dancing’ is one of her guiding principles: walking as a primary form of movement, so familiar that we hardly stop to think about it. Also in terms of the music, De Keersmaeker embarks on a journey towards a starting point that is in fact an intersection: the roots of pop music, the blues, and its mysterious ‘blue notes,’ in-between zones, between major and minor, sorrow and joy. The starting point for the performance is the song Walking Blues by legendary blues artist Robert Johnson; even though the journey leads back to Der Wanderer by Schubert, the best known singer-songwriter of the 19th Century. Meskerem Mees, an upcoming Flemish singer songwriter with Ethiopian roots, composed a series of variations, permutations, and other adaptations of 'walking songs,’ together with Jean-Marie Aerts, sound architect of TC Matic, the legendary Belgian 80s rock formation around singer Arno, and with dancer and guitarist Carlos Garbin.

In EXIT ABOVE, walking as primal motion and the blues as musical source meet. Choreographically, De Keersmaeker always moves from organically opening up simple movement material toward spatial and physical complexity, using precise geometrical patterns.EXIT ABOVE explores the tension between marching together and stepping out, between romantic solitary ‘wandern’ (wandering) and the political potential of a group of unarmed people walking together, the individual and the collective, the line and the circle. The act of walking runs counter to the hegemony of functionality and efficiency. It is an effort that produces nothing aside from the passing of time and the crossing of space. However, walking also generates thoughts and reminiscences that reveal the extent to which our inner world is also a landscape – a landscape that can often only be traversed on foot.

The performances will take place at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels from January 13 to 15, 2025. 
More information via Kaaitheater, De Munt/La Monnaie or Ancienne Belgique

We are also very excited to announce that Meskerem Mees, together with Carlos Garbin and Jean-Marie Aerts, made a record of the music of EXIT ABOVE! 
Attendees can find it at the merchandise stand of Ancienne Belgique, but it will soon also be available in the Rosas Webshop.