Rosas

"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 Jérôme Bel - Oct 2008