Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas’ Verklärte Nacht has its NYC premiere this week at BAC (photo courtesy Rosas)
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
January 30 – February 3, $20-$25
866-811-4111
bacnyc.org
www.rosas.be/en
Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her Rosas company open Baryshnikov Arts Center’s spring season with the New York premiere of Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”), running January 30 to February 3 in the Jerome Robbins Theater. It is set to Arnold Schönberg’s same-titled 1899 piece (op. 4) for string quartet by Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, inspired by the poem by German Symbolist Richard Dehmel, which begins, “Two figures pass through the bare, cold grove; / the moon accompanies them, they gaze into it. / The moon races above some tall oaks; / No trace of a cloud filters the sky’s light, / into which the dark treetops stretch.” The fifty-minute work will be performed by Boštjan Antončič, Cynthia Loemij, and Igor Shyshko; the lighting is by De Keersmaeker and Luc Schaltin, with costumes by Rosas / Rudy Sabounghi. Music is central to De Keersmaeker’s discipline; in September 2017, she presented A Love Supreme at New York Live Arts, a partly improvised re-creation of the masterful John Coltrane record, followed in September 2018 by her adaptation of Bach’s Six Brandenburg Concertos at the Park Avenue Armory. De Keersmaeker premiered Verklärte Nacht in 1995 with an ensemble but restructured it in 2014 for three dancers, concentrating more on the narrative elements of the poem.