‘Abstract movements constitute the basis of a layered choreographic structure in which repetition plays the lead role. The fierceness of these movements is countered by small everyday gestures. Rosas danst Rosas is unequivocally feminine’ (Rosas, 2020).
Thirty years ago, the Belgian dance company Rosas put itself on the map with the production Rosas danst Rosas. On 6th May 1983, a young Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker surprised everyone with the premiere of a piece that lasts 1 hour 40 minutes and consists of 4 parts. The performance quickly became an international classic and, in 1997, it was filmed by Thierry De Mey in an old technical school in Leuven. Since then, the choreography has been staged all over the world.
In 2013, fABULEUS, the Belgian dance and theatre project for young talents, proposed setting up a YouTube project together with Rosas. The aim of Re:Rosas! is to make contemporary dance attractive to children and teenagers as well as find new ways to present accessible contemporary dance performances to an adult audience. A lot of amusing and original versions of the famous chair scene began circulating on the net, from Japanese teenagers who delved into the material to schoolgirls dancing to Madonna’s Like a Virgin. The icon of contemporary dance had invaded the domain of pop culture, and so the circle was complete: for this choreography the dancers were inspired by everyday life. This gave Anne Teresa the idea to give back the dance material and to make it public property, as it was.
During lockdown, Rosas and fABULEUS challenged everyone to dance the famous chair scene, film it, and put it on YouTube. For Re:Rosas! Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Samantha van Wissen made a simplified version of the chair section, allowing everyone to get to work on their free interpretation with the statement ‘anything is possible!’. In this way, Rosas aims to stimulate people to start dancing themselves, to give them an insight into the subtleties of the material, and to introduce them to the pleasure of constructing their own choreographic structures.
This seemed like the perfect opportunity for the Year 2 students to approach their Creation & Performance module during lockdown. From April until their assessment in July, the student worked remotely to learn the materials, create their version of the piece, and to fully understand its contents and features. The outcome is a collective interpretation of the second movement of the original piece that they called ‘Sleep. Eat. Danst. Rosas’. Enjoy the show!
The University of Suffolk BA (Hons) Dance programme is supported by DanceEast – you can find out more about the course here.