Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker continues her danced dialogue with Bach in an exceptional solo that she dances herself to the Goldberg Variations, played live on stage by Pavel Kolesnikov. Giving space and body to the timeless masterpiece of the Baroque composer, she rediscovers the great motifs of her own creations, also based on the logical principles of fugue and counterpoint.

In composing the Goldberg Variations, ten years before his death, Bach magnified the art of variation. He set up a peaceful introductory aria based on a simple bass motif which was popular at the time, to which he applied a large number of developments, canons, fugues, jigs, chaconnes and choral sequences. The rigorously structured score is considered a perfect synthesis of the most important genres of piano music.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's work has regularly returned to the music of the Baroque composer. The choreographer shares many affinities with him as well as a similar taste for abstraction, an interest in structures that link the detailed and the whole, the small and the large, the living and the cosmos, and a deep attachment to the intertwined geometries of fugue or rondo figures. Their compositions, based on mathematical sequences, show the same rigour.

As she approaches sixty years of age, the choreographer decides to dance herself and on an empty stage, accompanied by the young Russian prodigy Pavel Kolesnikov on the piano and the lighting as her only scenography. She espouses the music as seldom seen, combining the virtuosity of the composition with the lively freedom of her interpretation, just like the pianist. The infinite variations of the music unfold in body and space through the sober and committed grace of the dancer and the choreographic mastery of an exceptional artist.

The relationship between dance and music, which has been at the heart of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's dance since the beginning, is so intimate here that her movement makes the internal architecture of the score perceptible. But in a unique twist, the musical work in turn illuminates the recurring and varied motifs of the choreographer's past performances.

These "keyboard exercises", as they were originally titled, are masterfully performed on stage by Pavel Kolesnikov and his fluid, vigorous and gentle virtuosity. In a rare exchange between the dancer and the musician, the score comes to life and sketches the portrait of a woman and an artist who has reached the middle of her life and the peak of her art.