Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker brought Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind to NYU Skirball in February 2020 – one of the final shows onstage before theaters went dark in March 2020. Revisit these gems from the NYU Skirball archives as you get ready for her return to New York, for the first time in almost exactly 4 years.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (NYU Tisch alum!) started choreographing in 1980. She founded Rosas in 1983 during the creation of the piece Rosas danst Rosas. In The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, she collaborates with internationally celebrated pianist, Pavel Kolesnikov, and uses Bach’s musical score as a blueprint for choreography.
Learn more about Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Pavel Kolesnikov, plus a set of readings from Rosas to contextualize the show.
Variations Goldberg, Poursuivre le dialogue intérieur — a text by Gilles Amalvi (in French)
I dance that I danced (and choreographed) — Notes to The Goldberg Variations written by Rudi Laermans
Leave-taking, Homecoming — Bojana Cvejić on Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Goldberg Variations
From the Vaults
Office Hours: Mitten Wir Im Leben Sind
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in conversation with NYU Professor Barbara Browning.
Ethan Philbrick on Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Is the cellist dancing? Are the dancers playing? Who is following whom? Who is accompanying whom?
Get Into It
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Christian Dumais-Lvowski (ed.), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: Rosas 2007–2017. Mercatorfonds, 2019.
Elena Filipovic (ed.), Work/Travail/Arbeid: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Mercatorfonds, 2016.
Eirini Kartsaki, Repetition in Performance: Returns and Invisible Forces. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Rudi Laermans, Moving Together: Theorizing and Making Contemporary Dance. Antennae, 2015.
Read All About It
New York Times | Oct 18, 2020
Critic's Notebook
What is it to dance? she seems to ask. What do our bodies know?
Bomb Magazine | Feb 11, 2020
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker by Ivan Talijancic
“From the beginning, I wanted to develop my own language, vocabulary, grammar. I literally went step by step.”
Extra Credit
De Keersmaeker is bringing a variation on The Goldberg Variations to the NYU Skirball stage for the second time in 2 weeks – following Clayton Lee’s The Goldberg Variations, which came to NYU Skirball on Feb 13, 2024 as part of the Queer New York International Arts Festival.
Lee & De Keersmaeker offer audiences very different takes on the material, but share a Bachian root – why not take inspiration from these artists & linger in the Bach of it all? Here’s a good place to start: “Goldberg Week” – NPR’s dedicated series to the Goldberg Variations, a project from their Classical Music wing – with contributions from scholars, musicians, & critics, including this comprehensive introduction & FAQ (including, yes, “who’s Goldberg?”); an argument for Hannibal Lecter as a consummate Bachian; & an eclectic collection of remixes.