En Atendant

It is music that has experienced war, conflict, death, poverty and a crisis of faith, which is reflected in dissonance, polyrhythm and complexity. Ars Superior’s music was created in the South of France and Northern Italy at the end of the 14th century, the dark century of the plague, the Hundred Years War and the Great Schism. It was music that was played at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, its highly refined vocal composition an intellectual alternative to a chaotic, crisis-riddled world.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has twice dedicated herself and her group Rosas to this music, which was conceived for Avignon in a production that functions as a diptychon: “En Atendant” and “Cesena”. Bodies, voices, and breath are all elements, which are used by the artists in “En Atendant”. Dancers sing and singers dance, and a flute holds a single note for five minutes. The dancers wear black clothes and trainers, they trip and fall, support and hold one another, contort themselves into knots, bend and at the end, the light, movement and breath are all extinguished on the empty stage in an illusion to silence and death.