Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is not a choreographer who believes in making life easy. Her new work is an unbroken 135 minutes of dance. I thought the first 110 minutes were wondrous; I found the rest too much. Dance of this intricate intensity is hard. The dancers get a break, but we, the audience, do not. It becomes exhausting.
I suspect that is part of De Keersmaeker’s point. Mystery Sonatas/for Rosa is not an entertainment as much as a meditation, a contemplation set to the Mystery Sonatas by Heinrich Biber, music for strings and keyboard to accompany the recitation of the rosary. De Keersmaeker follows the 17th-century composer’s structure – moving in groups of five from joy to sorrow to glory – but twists it to her own intent by making the piece a tribute to five Rosas – Bonheur (artist), Luxemburg (revolutionary), Parks (civil rights activist), Vergaelen (a nun who taught De Keersmaeker at school) and Rosa, the 15-year-old climate activist who died in the Belgian floods of 2021. (De Keersmaeker’s company is also called Rosas.)
These women, and the biblical references that underlie the music, are evoked rather than explained. There are constant silent groupings of tension and resistance that recall paintings and scenes from the Bible. Mary Magdalene, Mary and Jesus all seem to be there. A gesture where the dancers raise their arms, fists lightly clenched, made me think of Palm Sunday crowds as well as protestors.
It all looks beautiful. Minna Tiikkainen’s design carves the space with her own lighting; a great metal loop overhead reflects different colours. At one moment, the dancers lie beneath white beams of light as solid as corrugated iron; at another, the shape of a tomb seems to appear; when (I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden unexpectedly breaks into the soundtrack, the stage is full of glistening red. Between the sections there is a brilliant flash.
Fauve Ryckebusch’s costumes have a rare sense of texture: net dresses over shorts for both men and women, a little front-only top for Sophia Dinkel, bare chest for Franck Gizycki. Later there’s a red shirt for Mariana Miranda, a dress in the colours of Ukraine for Rafa Galdino, jackets that shine and glow.
The choreography is apparently structured around the shape of roses. A repeated movement sees the dancers (five initially, joined by two more) walk around like the spoke at the centre of a wheel, with one dancer running away at each turn. In one iteration, the movement is repeated, first turning forwards and then back.
Steps are simple but telling. There is a lot of skipping and jumping and versions of the formal dances in the music. There are group dances, sometimes full of joy, and extended solos full of anguish. Both are built on circular shapes. Lav Crnčević collapses at the end of his agonised turning and is carried into the wings by Jacob Storer; the entire piece ends with Cintia Sebők crouched in engulfing darkness.
By then, it has become an endurance test, but one shot through with moments both of magic and of mystery.
