Fase
Festival Theatre
8:30pm, Tue 14 Mar 2000
Score: 9
Short Review: Industrial
Two women come onstage in the dark for the “Piano Phase”, the first of four such Phases for the performance. The lights lift. A simple pre-recorded piano melody starts playing. The two women start spinning around and around, casting their shadows onto the white backdrop such that one central shadow is formed with the superposition of the two women. The shadow takes on a life of it’s own, and you have to keep reminding yourself there’s only two dancers on stage…
So starts Fase, an incredible piece of dance from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and the company she founded, Rosas. De Keersmaeker is joined onstage by Michele Anne De Mey, and the two look strikingly similar. The four Phases – Piano Phase, Come Out, Violin Phase, and Clapping Music, are all similar in that they all begin with simple repetitive movements which gradually become more and more complex as the piece progresses. Similarly, the music for each piece (created by Steve Reich) is constructed of small melodies or sounds, endlessly repeated, creating a mesmerising industrial feel to the performance.
Well, it might not sound like much, but I loved it. The only reason this didn’t get a big “10” is because there were a few tiny little mistakes… but, given that De Keersmaeker is doing the choreography for the other Rosas performances, I can’t wait to see them.