Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione Review

"We're told the piece is inspired by Vivaldi's glorious, uplifting, and life-enhancing The Four Seasons, as recorded by the virtuosic violinist and long-time Rosas collaborator Amandine Beyer and her ensemble Gli Incogniti; yet, most of Il Cimento is performed in silence, broken only by heavy breathing, occasional birdsong, foot stomping, and the chattering of one dancer's teeth."

"The stage is stripped bare. At the back, there's a full-length panel with parallel lines of white neon tubes, with similar, but less profuse, arrays of neon tubes either side (the choreographers are credited with set and lighting design). The work starts with a period of nothing but flashing neon lights, its seemingly inordinate length severely testing the audience's patience."

"Anne Teresa de Keersmaker's work often feels like a test of endurance for audiences. The uncompromising Belgian choreographer has stripped dance of what she considers unnecessary flummery to arrive at an abstract and geometric style of movement, deliberately unacademic and seemingly artless. De Keersmaker's company, Rosas, founded in 1983, is the main vehicle for her relentless exploration of the relationships between dance and other disciplines, including music."

"Radouan Mriziga is a Brussels-based Moroccan dance maker, whose vocabulary relies on geometrical rigour and organic movement. It's not surprising, then, that given such an obvious commonality of interests, he should have joined forces with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. They collaborated on 3ird5 @ w9rk (no, me neither), which premiered in Brussels in 2020; their latest joint work, a 90-minute unbroken piece entitled Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention), has reached Sadler's Wells for a brief two-night run, performed by Rosas with Mriziga's own A7LA5 (that reads as Atlas)."

Rosas, founded in 1983, drives Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s abstract, geometric approach that removes what she considers unnecessary theatricality. Radouan Mriziga’s movement vocabulary also relies on geometrical rigor and organic motion, leading to collaboration with de Keersmaeker. Their latest 90-minute work, Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione, is performed in an unbroken run by Rosas with Mriziga’s A7LA5. Although inspired by Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as recorded by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, most of the piece occurs in silence. Sound is limited to heavy breathing, birdsong, foot stomping, and a dancer’s teeth chattering. The stage is stripped bare with parallel neon tube panels, and the work begins with an extended sequence of flashing lights.

Read at London Unattached