Rosas Danst Rosas Review

Rosas Danst Rosas, choreographed and staged in 1983 by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and was originally performed by 4 members of the Rosas company. In the 1997 film, a shorter version was portrayed by 18 female dancers in total including Keersmaeker, directed  by Thierry De Mey. The film is set in the former school of architect Henry Van de Velde in Leuven and De Mey takes full advantage of the spatial and geometrical quailites of the building, its as if the building helps give a certain feel to the dance piece, the ghostly corridors and sense of emptiness or abandonment. 
 The dancers perform in and around the dormant rooms and walls. Their costumes are  various dull colours, grey over sized shirts with black skirts, to me its not dissimilar to a hospital gown for a mental health institute, the uniformity also links back to the location in which it is in. 

Repetitive, minimalist, pedestrian and abstract styles are used throughout the film, a signature style for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and the Rosas company, The dance has eight different sections, Moving In, Floor, Chairs, Building, Glass, Lying Down, Inner Court and Coda. I will be focusing on only 3 sections, Floor, Chairs and Glass . 

The dance opens with a long shot of a corridor, four dancers run in at different moments and face away from the camera,then suddenly they drop to the floor in unison. The movement in the floor section opening the piece is very slow and accompanied by not music, as such, but of every sound they could hear whilst recording, such as the heavy breathing of the dancers, and the sounds there bodies make against the surfaces they are working in such as, running across the floor or sliding their arms across the floor when they lower to the ground. Key movements involve rolling in both canon and unison, pushing up from the ground and falling back towards it, the camera angles used in this section work together with the movement to entice the audience, it brings you in to each dancers personal space, and as a viewer you feel more linked with piece, it creates a more intense quality movement structure and heightens the atmosphere. Linking back to the building used, it is quite a hollowing experience.

This whole floor section is 8 minutes long and nearing the end of the 8 minutes the movements suddenly become very fast and sharp, their breathing picks up and over takes everything you hear, it intensifies the atmosphere surrounding the piece. I think the use of extreme opposites of speeds made it very effective when combined with the close up camera angles. 

In the chair section of Rosas, the women repeat a selection of motifs, creating a growing routine (they'll do one movement, then repeat that movement then add something else to it, then do the first and second movement and adding a third) whilst sitting on chairs. The music changes from just their breathing to include a beat. The whole section is representational of a storm, the way it builds up and becomes more and more hectic.