En Atendant & Cesena: A Choreographer's Score

En Atendant & Cesena: A Choreographer’s Score is a conversation in which the Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker offers the performance theorist and musicologist Bojana Cveji wide-ranging insights into choreography, and into the making ofher two most recent large-scale works, En Atendant and Cesena (co-authored by Björn Schmelzer and visually shaped by Ann Veronica Janssens), which explore the world of Ars subtilior, the highly refined musical style of the late fourteenth century. The same special format of scoring by way of narration, analysis, and documentation, devised by the authors as an examination of De Keersmaeker’s early works in A Choreographer’s Score: Fase, Rosas danst Rosas, Elena’s Aria, Bartók (2012), is enriched here by the manifold registers and intricacies of a mature style and an elaborate poetics. Thirty years of development in De Keersmaeker’s oeuvre has taken place since the times discussed and documented in the first Choreographer’s Score.

This second edition comprises a book of interviews, illustrated by numerous drawings, schemes, photos, various choreographic and dramaturgical materials, and post-performance documents, as well as 3 DVDs including demonstrations performed by an excellent cast of dancers from the ensemble Rosas and singers from the ensemble Graindelavoix. As a special feature of the three video interviews, excerpts from the filmed performances in the Papal Palace in Avignon by the filmmakers Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes are included. The compound score is accompanied by a book of photographs by the visual artist Michel François, whose gaze stems from his collaborative role in shaping the visual space of En Atendant.