The Internet Danst Rosas: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker for the YouTube Generation

by Claire Frisbie

"We look at each other, and we nod to each other, as if we agree to dance together. We come back to the center. We turn to the other person, and we also nod.” —ATDK on YouTube

So begins movement two of iconic Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s seminal piece Rosas Danst Rosas. Created in 1983, this repetitive, minimalist choreography established 23-year-old De Keersmaeker as a promising, important artist, and put her on the map for audiences worldwide. Set to a hypnotic, percussive score by Belgian composer Thierry De Mey, Rosas Danst Rosas was admired for its seemingly mundane gestures arranged in complex combinations. It was celebrated as a feminist piece, but also deemed difficult, overly repeating, and dark.

De Keersmaeker made her US debut at BAM as part of the 1986 Next Wave Festival with Rosas Danst Rosas—which translates to “Roses dances roses”—and name-checks De Keersmaeker’s company, Rosas. The New York Times review described the chair sequence as “a ritual expressing the agony of waiting. Each dancer kept crossing her legs, turning her head expectantly, holding her head despairingly in her hands, sagging forward and twitching back to attention."