Rosas

Forêt is a museum project for eleven dancers, created for the first floor of the Denon wing at the Louvre. For Forêt, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker assembles a new generation of artists and performers, in collaboration with choreographer Némo Flouret. De Keersmaeker and Flouret have worked together on several occasions, including Dark Red at the Fondation Beyeler in 2021.

In this new project, the Italian and French galleries of the Louvre are the starting point for a reflection on the image as a way of worldmaking. Forêt travels through the Louvre’s collection of paintings from the 14th to the 19th century to examine the emergence of visual culture and the modern scopic regime. It draws on the notions of limits and extremities, and activates the museum’s architecture and artwork, by exploring strategies of framing and by playing with scale, contrast, and excess. The choreography is based on movements of expansion and contraction, not only within the individual body, but also in relation to the organization of time and space.

Which positions can be taken with respect to the Louvre? How can performers confront the massive amounts of information and narratives contained inside this building? How will bodies and voices resonate as they move through a museum of such density? Can solitude surface as an effect?

Exploring a variety of mediums, Forêt will arrive at a spectrum of situations and scenes, punctuating the spectator’s trajectory with unexpected rendez-vous.