Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (°1960) founded the dance company Rosas in 1983. Her choreographic work has always aimed at a meticulous exploration of the relationship between dance and music. With Rosas, De Keersmaeker has created an extensive oeuvre, deploying musical structures and scores from a variety of eras, ranging from early modern music to contemporary compositions and even pop. Her choreographic practice also borrows formal principles from geometry, mathematical models, natural phenomena and general social structures, each time offering a unique perspective on the way a body moves in time and space.
Following a period in which De Keersmaeker dedicated herself to several performances with larger ensembles, the choreographer's work took a decidedly new artistic turn in 2007. New choreographic principles came to the fore, different questions arose, previously unknown working methods were developed, many a new insight was gained. Photographer Anne Van Aerschot was a privileged witness of this process. De Keersmaeker's artistic assistant of many years, she was able to follow closely the creative process underlying her performances from beginning to end. Unlike any other observer, Van Aerschot is familiar with both the language and the work process of the Belgian choreographer. Her photographs thus offer an exceptional and unmediated view of Rosas's universe of dance and, for the first time in ten years, they are collected in one and the same book.