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.
D. “Swagg” Arcelious Harris on “Exit Above”
That is the nature of the blues. Even unnamed, it is present. Robert Johnson’s “Walking Blues” stands as a stark
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“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.
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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
Bomb | February 11, 2020
Music Made Visible: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker by Ivan Talijancic
“Throughout my entire trajectory as a choreographer, the relationship with music has been primary.”
Rosas | June 21, 2023
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.”
Avignon Festival | 2025
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.”
The Guardian | November 17, 2024
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.