Vortex temporum at La Monnaie

For Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who delights in the complexity of contemporary music, Vortex Temporum has been the piece around which her attention has centred in the last decade. Rigorously constructed and refined in timbre, this mature work by the French composer Gérard Grisey, on the one hand offers spectral harmony based on the natural acoustic properties of sound, and, on the other, a sharp sense of motility in circles and spiral-patterns in which performances of Rosas abound. An excellent cast of Rosas dancers and Ictus musicians come together in a shared quest to compose various experiences of time. De Keersmaeker will explore for how time contracts and expands, swirls and foliates in a choreographic counterpoint of sound, musicians’ gestures, dancers’ movements and spatial dynamics.