BREL

Dance about the music, presence, and expression of Jacques Brel.

BREL is a performance about Jacques Brel by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and dancer and emerging choreographer Solal Mariotte.

She, the ‘Flamande’, a classically trained dancer and choreographer. He, the French breakdancer, two generations younger. They find common ground in the passion and energy of Jacques Brel. With his music and poems, his frenetic presence on stage, his burlesque facial expressions bordering on excess. And also his razor-sharp observations of society: about loneliness and friendship, love and war, childhood and ageing. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Solal Mariotte draw on Jacques Brel as a source of inspiration to question today’s world.

Brel is an atypical performance within (recent) works by De Keersmaeker, and precisely for that reason, it is so surprising. It is both a personal reflection by an ageing dancer on time that has passed, and the work of an artist who continues to experiment and play, even after the storm that has swept over her and Rosas.

Review De Standaard

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concept, choreography and dance Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Solal Mariotte chansons Jacques Brel light Design Minna Tiikkainen assisted by Marla van Kessel scenography Michel François costumes Aouatif Boulaich dramaturgy Wannes Gyselinck rehearsal director and assistants Nina Godderis, Johanne Saunier dance research Pierre Bastin music research France Brel/Fondation Jacques Brel, Filip Jordens sound Alex Fostier production Rosas co-production Concertgebouw Brugge (Bruges), Festival d’Avignon, Grec Festival (Barcelone), ImPulsTanz (Vienna), La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand, La Comète (Châlons-en-Champagne), La Monnaie / De Munt (Brussels), L’Intime Festival de Namur (Namen), Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa (Milan), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris) with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels this production is realized with the support of the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government via Casa Kafka Pictures Rosas is supported by the Flemish Community and the Flemish Community Commission (VGC).