title : 3Abschied (2010)

concept : Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Jerôme Bel
with : Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Sara Fulgoni, Ictus Ensemble
music : Gustav Mahler, Der Abschied / Das Lied von der Erde, arrangement Arnold Schoenberg
music performed live by : Ictus
conductor : Georges-Elie Octors
voice : Sara Fulgoni / Ursula Hesse
production : Rosas (Brussels), in collaboration with R.B. Jérôme Bel (Paris)
coproduction : De Munt/La Monnaie (Brussels), Opéra de Lille (Lille), Salder's Wells (London), Theater an der Wien (Wien), Théâtre de la Ville in collaboration with Festival d'Automne (Paris), Hellerau European Center for the Arts (Dresden)
tour information and organization : contact Rosas, www.rosas.be 

Only the last part of our « Song of the Earth » remains, the Abschied, the Farewell.

This long, mysterious and gripping song, its complexity, which is not only musical but also semantic, is at stake in our attempt at performing it. The question that concerns us is how to do justice, choreographically and theatrically, to Mahler’s work. How to render in dance the wisdom and the quietude in the face of the ineluctable expressed in so masterly a fashion in Mahler’s composition ?

We will not be alone in seeking to answer this question. Our musician colleagues will be challenged to help us to give form to the disturbing feeling which seizes us when we hear the work. At the risk of failure or ridicule, we will throw ourselves into the music beyond our physical limits. We will strive, even at the risk of repeating ourselves (as the title indicates), to exhaust the work, which of course will resist us.

But, like (the personage of) Mahler in the face of death, we are afraid of nothing