In En Atendant, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is taking a new step in her exploration of the combination of music and dance. After Bach and Webern in Zeitung, The Beatles in The Song and Mahler in 3Abschied, this time her starting point is the Ars Subtilior: a complex and intellectual form of polyphonic music from the 14th century that is based on dissonance and contrast. Ars Subtilior developed on the ruins of the plague and the Church at a time when the social, political and religious pillars of mediaeval society were fragmenting. Nowadays this upheaval seems more relevant than ever. In the light of today’s increasingly confusing events and the complexity of the choices we face, the question of our mortality and physicality is becoming ever more crucial.
