Rosas

At the Neue Nationalgalerie – recently refurbished by David Chipperfield – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues with Dark Red : an ongoing series of choreographies for museums. The expansive, transparent space of the iconic Nationalgalerie sets the stage for a new creation in a collaboration with choreographers and dancers Cassiel Gaube and Soa Ratsifandrihana, flutist Chryssi Dimitriou and visual artist Ann Veronica Janssens with whom Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has already frequently collaborated in the past.

For 4 days, the Neue Nationalgalerie will be the venue for micro solo improvisations to 8 parts of the L’Opera per Flauto by Salvatore Sciarrino, performed live by Chryssi Dimitriou. Breathing has long been one of the choreographic principles structuring the work of choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In Sciarrino’s L’Opera per Flauto, breathing is not only life-giving, but also life-consuming, incorporating both life and loss. It’s a cyclical movement that resonates in the opening and closing spiral that make up the choreographies’ framework of time and space.

Dark Red was conceived in 2019 as a progressive series of self-reflexive performances carrying dance from the black box into the white cube. It is the first time a strong dialogue with the architecture takes centre stage. The new choreography is founded on the confrontation between the architectural logic of consolidation and the contingency of body and time. Dark Red - Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin sizes up the geometry of utopia against the utopia of geometry and confronts it with the dancing, breathing body.