Renowned choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to NYU Skirball with Exit Above – a new work developed in collaboration with musicians, as a way to explore the connections between walking as a richly complex site for thinking through movement, and the origins of contemporary music in the traditions of African American blues:
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.
Learn more about Rosas, De Keersmaeker’s long-running company, as well as this piece.
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GET INTO IT
Listen In
Listen In
“Walkin’ Blues” is a canonical song in the blues repertoire. De Keersmaeker points specifically to Robert Johnson’s version, but it’s attributed variously to Son House, who recorded a version in 1930 and a different version in 1941/42, and to Robert Johnson, who released a version in 1936, as well as Muddy Waters in 1950 & continued to play with different riffs and verses for the song throughout his career. (Compare lyrical differences at the links via Genius!)
Johnson is sometimes called the first rock star, and his influence is particularly noted in relation to rock and roll in the 60s, when a posthumous album, “King of the Delta Blues Singers,” brought him to prominence and influence particularly for white popular musicians – Bob Dylan and members of the Rolling Stones specifically cite his influence. Legend has it he sold his soul to a crossroads devil, in order to gain his incredible skill with a guitar. He is also considered to be the first member of the “27 Club.”
BB King, Taj Mahal, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and the Grateful Dead have all recorded renditions of “Walkin’ Blues.” Listen to an original recording from Johnson, plus a more recent rendition in duet form below.
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Daniel Beaumont, Preachin’ the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House (2011).
Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1998).
Robert “Mack” McCormick, Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey (2023).
Allan Moore, The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music (2004).
Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (2003).
READ ALL ABOUT IT
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Music Made Visible: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker by Ivan Talijancic
“Throughout my entire trajectory as a choreographer, the relationship with music has been primary.”
Interview with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
“Dance serves to organise movements through space along a vertical axis and a horizontal one—in that sense, a walk is but a possible dance.”
Interview with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jean-Marie Aerts and Meskerem Mees on EXIT ABOVE
“Blues goes all the way back to that essence, also content wise: it is about sorrow and joy, my sorrow, my joy but also our sorrow, our joy.”
Review: Exit Above
In its willingness to use a different vocabulary to explore its philosophical concerns, Exit Above keeps De Keersmaeker poised on the cutting edge, giving it her own particular sheen.
From the Archives
From the Archives
RELATED EVENTS
RELATED EVENTS
- Thu Mar 5 – Sat Mar 7, 2026
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: EXIT ABOVE
- Dance
- Skirball Presents