Episode 2. Dance archeology. Working with the repertory of Rosas

Rosas, the dance company of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, has developed an extensive and diverse repertoire over the years. This means that Rosas provides a rich case study to explore questions of repertory. We can examine the various roles in the repertory field: from original to new cast member, from rehearsal director to repertory teacher. We can unpack the different approaches to transmission used in restagings and recreations, and in schools. Most of all, by talking to those busy in the studio and on the stage, we can hear what it’s like to dig into the layers of time and the different iterations of multiple performers. We hear what it takes to keep dance repertoire vibrant, evening after evening; to dance other people’s roles, yet always being yourself. 

Laura Maria Poletti, Clinton Stringer and Jacob Storer generously contemplate their approaches to repertory by sharing their stories and perspectives - from joys to complexities, questions to solutions.

Sound featured in the episode: Stage recordings from performances by Rosas/Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, recorded by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes: Bartók / Beethoven / Schönberg. Music: Grosse Fuge, op.133, by Ludwig van Beethoven, played live by Ictus — Drumming. Music: Drumming, by Steve Reich, played live by Ictus — The Song — Come Out, by Steve Reich (Nonesuch Records) — Theme music composed by Inne Eysermans.

Voices of: Laura Maria Poletti, Clinton Stringer, Jacob Storer

Interviews and narration: Tessa Hall

Transcript

You could say that dance is ephemeral. That it’s performed in the present and then gone. That the only way to know it, is to experience it, live.

So how can a live artform like dance survive across time? How can we experience choreographies from the past, the same way we can experience paintings in a museum? How would that happen? Especially if the object is movement, not something tangible like stone or canvas. 

To keep dance alive, it needs to be transmitted from body to body, audience to audience. 

Choreographies from the past, revived, and performed in the present—this is what we call 'repertory', and it’s a way of keeping dance alive and connecting us to dance heritage.

But the practice of doing repertoire isn’t always obvious. There are many ways to pass on a work through time and many questions to face.

Welcome to Body of Work — a podcast that explores the question of ‘doing’ dance heritage. This is a podcast by STUK, House for Dance, Image and Sound, in the city of Leuven. My name is Tessa Hall. I’m a dancer myself and also a dance heritage researcher.  

At STUK, we’ve been researching the heritage of the contemporary dance scene in Flanders, and with this series we’ll share that with you. To do that, we’ll meet all kinds of dance practitioners who’ve been working in the field of repertory. 

VO: What’s remarkable about Rosas, the company of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, is that they have such an extensive repertoire. She is a choreographer who has a working relationship with the past, present and future. One work feeds the next and the next and the next. So then, it makes sense that Rosas is a company that has always chosen to invest in its lineage—its repertoire. 

As for the question of dance repertory, Rosas offers us an interesting case-study… We can compare and contrast different approaches to repertoire, starting from the classic copy and paste approach to repertoire as rewriting, or reworking a piece into a new version. We can meet so many different dancers, who have performed multiple pieces of repertoire. We meet the people in-charge of reviving work—the rehearsal directors—who each have their own way of transmitting. We can even talk to so many different teachers, who work with repertory in educational settings.

So I got to sit down and talk with a group of them. Let’s meet 3 of the dancers, rehearsal directors and teachers who have worked with Rosas. From joys to complexities, questions to solutions, let’s hear how they approach this work.

Clinton Stringer: So the first piece I ever danced was Rosas Danst Rosas in PARTS.

VO: Clinton went to PARTS, a contemporary dance school in Brussels, which is also directed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. That’s where he first encountered her choreography.

Clinton Stringer: My name is Clinton Stringer. I'm 50 years old. I have three nationalities: South African, British and Belgian. And I live in Brussels.

VO: Later on, Clinton joined the company and danced a multitude of pieces. Now, he’s a teacher at PARTS, a rehearsal director at Rosas, and transmits Rosas repertory all over the world. 

Clinton Stringer: Stagings on different companies all over Europe, workshops with pre-professional dancers, workshops with amateur dancers, all Rosas based and on multiple shows, so on the Royal Danish Ballet, Ballet of Lyon, Vienna State Ballet, the Ballet of Lisbon, Paris Opera…multiple. Mostly ballet companies, or kind of repertory companies like Lyon and Lisbon, or professionals [schools] like Drumming in PARTS, six weeks, five weeks, extensive recreations I would say. And then really small, kind of, masterclasses.

Jacob Storer: I'm Jacob Storer. How old am I? I'm 33 and I am from the US. I joined the company in 2020. And the first project I was involved with was the retaking of Drumming. So that is, the only repertory dance piece I've danced at Rosas. 

VO: But when Jacob came to Rosas, he already had plenty of experience dancing repertory with the previous company he was working for.

Jacob Storer: I was dancing in Trisha Brown Dance Company, so I danced quite a lot of repertory from that company. I joined Rosas with that skill set of learning repertory already in my pocket. The whole looking at video, learning from people who did the dance, learning from other casts who have done the dance, and trying to find the balance between all of this and then at the same time, trying to find the balance of who am I inside of this. 

Laura Maria Poletti: I'm Laura Maria Poletti. I'm 33 years old, and I'm from Corsica. I began dancing in the local dance school. Very small one. And I've done that through childhood. I went to PARTS. And then the last year of PARTS there was an audition notice for Rosas. And I just decided to apply and eventually got the job. That's how I started.

VO: When Laura Maria auditioned for Rosas, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was specifically looking for repertory dancers. 

Laura Maria Poletti: And it was a long term contract, so we knew there would be more than one piece, to be learned and toured. That was in 2016. And then I continued mainly like consistently through repertory work. Even now I still work with Rosas as a freelance dancer. So performing still some of the works like Fase and I also, I am there now also as a rehearsal director sometimes.

VO: As people working on the inside, how would they define what repertoire is?

Clinton Stringer: As a dancer, if I am coming to learn something that I've never made, then I'm crawling into the skin of something else. And for me, that's repertory. So when I teach repertory, I always start—especially nowadays in the climate of education—I always start with a little speech about what repertory is for me. And for me, I always explain it like it's a costume. So it's a costume, some of them are older than others. And it's almost like drag. You put it on and you see how it feels in your body when you move. For example, when I learned the Grosse Fuge for the first time. The energy is very masculine, and I'm not like that kind of dancer. And I was thinking, "oh, how am I going to speak through this? Or how am I going to identify with this?" And that's where the costume idea really rings true for me, because I put that costume on of that piece, of that movement, and I discover things in myself, in my own dance personality, that do resonate with that movement. That surprises me because I would never normally wear that costume. I would never normally dance that material. But, I'm really trying to inhabit it, so I'm trying to understand what's necessary to perform it. I think each performer has to find their own way to identify with the original role, the original piece, the original writing.

Jacob Storer: I think repertoire means that it's already premiered and that it's been around for a while. I come from a lineage of dancing repertory, for me it means it's a pre-existing piece that is re-taken. A production, a new production. And perhaps for me, that would be the definition.

Laura Maria Poletti: I do think that repertory is the crystallization of what has happened in a moment, in time and space with a certain group of people, and for some reasons, that I am still trying to figure out what those reasons are, this work continues and travels through time and is performed over and over again and transmitted to different dancers, generation after generation. There is something, I think of a kind of lineage that goes through. Basically I think it comes down to this very special moment that we're trying to capture and then bring through the years.

VO: Transmission is a term quite familiar to Rosas dancers. That’s because passing on repertoire is something that Rosas has always been invested in, so they have a pretty developed practice of transmission. But no matter how well developed these methods are, there’s always this “in-between” space where things get lost in translation. That’s simply the nature of body to body transmission. 

Laura Maria Poletti: I came in a company where there was already a lot of experience with transmitting work. For instance, I've been the fourth generation of Rosas Danst Rosas dancers. So there is a certain history and I would even say like very clear strategies of transmission. But eventually it's very human…It's a relationship. And I would say it's how physically it goes from one body to another body. I think it's like that in between: between two people, between two different moments in time, between different  spaces. So it's almost like the space in between that becomes interesting. 

Although I've had this very funny experience where I've been casted as Michèle Anne De Mey for many years, I feel I have a relationship with that person. However, the transmission was never directly done by her. It was always through other people. So it always means I had that input or their biases or their perspective on the piece while trying…

Tessa Hall: So someone else's perspective on.

Laura Maria Poletti: That role.

Tessa Hall: Her. Michèle Anne. 

Laura Maria Poletti: Yes, yes. So you have all this, like entangled relationships with each other. And then finally I got to meet the real Michèle Anne De Mey. And that has been really, like, a bit mind blowing. I felt like, oh, I understood something about that person or that role or her way of approaching movement that I didn't get through the other people. However, I got from the other people tons of like pieces of information that were crucial. So it's really like a puzzle where like all the pieces sometimes connect, but after many years. 

VO: Let’s rewind and talk about the process of learning repertoire—the methods of transmission. When I spoke to Jacob, he used Drumming (a piece made in 1998) to explain how it works.

Jacob Storer: Oh, I have to think back. Specifically with Drumming, it is very much heavy on the phrases—the dance phrase and the construction of that material. And then also on the certain mathematical and sacred geometrical patterns that Anne Teresa is obsessed with. It's the core of her practice. So basically it starts with learning the phrase.  Infamous at Rosas is not only the material in its completion (which we call going), we also learn the retro, which is the reverse. So first you learn all of the material "going" and you learn all of the material "reverse". There's also a right side and a left side. Most people learn one or the other, and depending on the role you dance, you might have to know both. I was the left side in going, but I did the right side in retro. In the material, dancing Ursula's role. Ursula Robb is who I was cast as.   

Tessa Hall: So you learn the phrase, you learn it going, you learn it retro, and then…

Jacob Storer: And then you start to learn the role. So…with any repertory, it's the role of the rehearsal director to be like, "okay, how is the best approach?" Because we weren't in the creation of it, right? So we have to start to embody the material, first off, and then we have to start to embody the composition. And it's a whole question of which do you prioritise first? One always helps and influences the other and vice versa. 

The video is often a main resource to learning. There's also sometimes writing, and there's also the choreographer who will be present sometimes. There’s always challenges when it comes to using video, because video is not always the best indication of the piece, because that night you might have been a bit fast, that night you might have been a bit tired, you know? You never really know what was going on. So it was a lot of negotiation between which videos we would do, and videos being live performances of the piece.

VO: There are many ways of transmitting choreography, and that means many ways to learn movements. For example, some people like to copy from videos, or some people need to know the “counts” of movements—the 5, 6, 7, 8 if you will. But on the other hand, not everybody likes to count. Some people even find a way to remember movements by singing… 

Laura Maria Poletti: If I understand the mechanics or I call it the song of the movement through repetition, mainly, then I feel I have learned it. So if I'm able to sing the sequence while doing it, then I know it's there, it's in my body.

Reversely, when I need to take it back. Like often I have gaps and like I don't remember things, but then if I start singing it again, then I know it will come back. I know if I have the melody of the steps, it's there. 

VO: To tell us more about how a transmission process works, Clinton used an example from when he was the rehearsal director for the Grosse Fuge alongside Mark Lorimer. 

Grosse Fuge began as a section of an earlier piece called Erts, back in 1992, but by 2002 it was extracted and re-formed into a piece in its own right. Since then, it’s been performed by multiple companies. 

Clinton Stringer: I led the project to teach to the Vienna State Ballet. So I taught three roles, Mark taught two. And so through that process, because I was leading the project, I wanted to really understand what I was talking about. And so I went through a whole, almost archaeological research, into minuscule detail. So we spent a week in the studio alone, analysing. Because there have been so many versions of the piece. It's been going since 92. And so it really depends who's teaching it, which video you're looking at. There's so many mistakes. I mean, not mistakes, but like different adaptations, really trying to understand what the original writing could be.

It's really digging back and trying to understand, "oh, that's a retrograde of this movement, so maybe we should blanket state this version as the version. That's a whole subject when we're talking about repertory. Every single cast that dances it has a version.

Tessa Hall: I can imagine then when you're in the role of the teacher or the transmitter, there is kind of a responsibility like in the evolution of this piece, because you making those archaeological decisions is going to affect the next step in its life.

Clinton Stringer: Absolutely. And that's why I take it... I really take it seriously and I try to understand. I also know who I learned it from and who I danced it with and so I know what their deal was, so to say, or what their... You know, if one person wasn't so good at counting or one person was always ahead or, you know, I know all of those idiosyncrasies of my colleagues and so I can look at videos with that filter.

I'm digging through the iterations of each role and trying to understand what the original intention of the writing was, and maybe to find the version that I, as an archaeologist, am happy with and proud of to put on stage, you know. But it’s really…I really see it as that — as an archaeologist, a dance archaeologist, a d-archaeologist.

VO: It seems that the backstories from the original creation process are also important in the transmission.

Jacob Storer: An important thing that I learned about repertory in teaching my role of a creation to somebody else, was like okay, this is what the task was to make the material, this is the material, and this is my take on the task. That's why I move like this. So I think that if I wasn't giving the backstory to why I was doing something, the movement wouldn't have the same quality, and then it would just become shape oriented and then it would be a little bit empty. That's something that happens in repertory: if you're only taking the mechanics, then you're seeing a very mechanical dance. But if you only take the intention and not the spatial specificity, then it's also not quite the dance. 

Laura Maria Poletti: I think actually, all those little stories, all those little things that have happened are actually what makes the process of today so rich. Because, if repertoire is just reproducing what has happened it's very easy. I think when you're used to this kind of work, you can learn movement, you can reproduce it. But then it stays really flat. And when you start adding all those layers of what was going on in the group at that time, how the atmosphere was like. You also start to understand why things were made a certain way. And then I feel as a performer, it gives you agency to decide how you want to bring it to the stage this time? Because otherwise it just becomes, you know, about me reproducing a sequence of movement, but it's not so exciting, and I want to believe that it's not so exciting for an audience member as well.

And I, I find all these stories, they nurture…I think, a kind of empowerment or agency that we as performers can use to decide. We're really talking about the microscopic level that probably is not noticeable to, like the average audience member, but that makes the work so rich. It's very interesting to know what were the relationships or the dynamics at that time, because then those things are shown in the work. 

And that's also really interesting because it means you need to have different sources. However, it's impossible to bring it all to the stage. And the fact that you can curate a little bit of what you take from all that massive load of information, that the fact you're able to decide what you bring when, how, I think that's very powerful.

VO: Inevitably, choreography will keep on evolving. That’s simply the nature of a live and ephemeral artform. The question is: how much do you allow that transformation or how much do you hold on to the original?

Clinton Stringer: I think that if you go too much down the restrictive path of "it has to be exactly like this, and..." I think it leads to the death of the repertory. It doesn't live, it doesn't breathe, it's not inhabited by humans. So I'm weary of that route. However, I'm also a dance nerd and very, very excited about precision. And so I would try to encourage people to be precise, but yet find a way that they speak through the precision of the original, if that makes sense? So I can give a clear example: there's this section in the Grosse Fuge called "the babies". A baby is a specific movement where you throw your arms out in front of you while you jump backwards into space, as if you are reaching for a baby, and then you roll. It's, let's say, an acrobatic movement. And in the section of "the babies", you repeat it 20 times in the space of a minute. So you're throwing, throwing, throwing, throwing, throwing. I had Igor Shyshko dancing next to me who is a wild Belarusian dancer. And so I would get really excited because he was going for it and if I didn't do exactly what he was doing, he would roll onto me. I mean, we would have to be exactly spaced and all of that. So we got into this vibe of being wild together, and slowly through the performance, I transformed the movement because I started to feel, "oh, it's fun if I throw my arms a little higher and I look up to the top balcony" in this kind of dramatic, jazzy way. And that's not the original piece. And so the rehearsal director at the time had words, and that was good, because I was inhabiting the feeling, but I was transforming the movement in a way that took it out of the original and also out of the unison of the stage, because other people weren't doing that. And so it was important for me to lower my arms and still hold on to that thing that I'd found, which was that rock n roll wild animal thing.

So trying not to squash the individuality of the person, but encourage it through a different... a form that's closer to the original, let's say. So because you do want people to enjoy themselves in the movement and they can through the original movement — they don't need to transform the original movement to find that.

Tessa Hall: It sounds like constant decision making.

Jacob Storer: Constant negotiation. And it's a struggle. I do find it beautiful, but it is a struggle. So there's always this balance between: you're not trying to dance like somebody else, but yet you kind of are trying to because their way of moving is the piece. It's also debatable. Like, where is that line before you're no longer dancing the piece? How far is it? Is it only quality? Is it only spatial geometry? Where is that line? And it's totally subjective. 

Which also gets me to another important part about learning repertory, which is: who is your rehearsal director. Because every single person in the dance has a different perspective of the dance; has a different approach. So you'll have a Drumming led by Cynthia, which will look different than a Drumming led by Marta, which will look different than a Drumming led by Fumiyo.

VO: Cynthia Loemij and Fumiyo Ikeda were in the original cast of Drumming in 1998, and Marta Coronado danced it for a long time too. At various points, the 3 of them have been rehearsal directors for Drumming. And like them, all rehearsal directors bring their own approach to the process. 

Laura Maria spoke to me about this image of being like a vessel. This is something that resonantes with her. 

Laura Maria Poletti: I really think it's a beautiful way to describe ourselves as repertory dancers. As long as it doesn't become empty. Like if you just consider our bodies and our work as an empty vessel for the work to be poured in, I think it's not honoring the work that we do. However, I think it's very humbling, because you're also just a vessel. It's passing through you, and then you have to let go. There is not any sense of ownership or I don't have any rights on all these movements and stories. However you're also part of something bigger than yourself, which is… it's almost a relief. And then it's allowing me for questions like, “what is my role in all this story? What do I bring to this work?” And that I think I'm really honored to have been a vessel for so many years. Also, because now it's starting to go both ways. You know, I've received as a performer, and now I also give it back as a teacher. So in that sense, I really have this sense of like container and content that are kind of like they're very entangled. It's also traveling to other bodies, to other vessels that approach it in a very different way. That's why I feel then the work keeps on being alive. It's crystallized, but it keeps on traveling because of all this back and forth movement.

That's also the richness of it. Every time it's transmitted, someone adds and adds and adds. So you're just like superimposing layers on layers on layers on layers, and I don't think it buries the work under. I think that's how the work reveals itself. Like through all those layers of knowledge that have been like sedimenting. Also, just because we are, we're dealing with the same quality. We're dealing with the same movements, but obviously we don't have the same body, we don't have the same way to approach movement. And I think that's also very interesting. There were works where I really struggled because you literally have to like you have to wear someone else's shoes, like.

Tessa Hall: Literally 

Laura Maria Poletti: Like literally, In Rosas work, like oftentimes. And then that's where the work is for repertory dance. It’s like how, with what I have today, right now, how do I do this? like staying true to myself in a way. Without completely ignoring, you know, my physical needs or even the way I like to do things.

VO: As the dancers figure out how to bring themselves into the work, they also have to figure out where the limit is. Actually, Clinton brought up a story about this from when he was dancing a piece called Rain, which premiered back in 2001. 

Clinton Stringer: There's a movement in Jakub's phrase in Rain which is very spectacular. It's a roll that goes into a three part turn that lands on the floor on your back. And Jakub will disagree with me, but I still contend that in the original version of that movement, in the turn, we stayed on the floor, connected to the floor in a kind of pirouette. And through dancing, Jakub made it even more spectacular by adding a jump to the turn. And eventually we all started jumping because it was more fun and we didn't want to be left out. And it was his material, so he could kind of do what he wanted. Anyway, the point of that moment was to be spectacular, so, "hey, if we're going to jump, let's add it", you know? And so if you then taught it without the jump, I think you're going against the piece because you're going back to the original writing, but you are going against the idea of pushing and throwing and spectacular and acrobatic. So I would argue for the jump in that case.

Tessa Hall: It's a lot of choice making.

Clinton Stringer: That's what I'm talking about with archaeology. There's a lot of: what is needed? What energy wise is needed? Energy for the piece, energy for the role, energy for the performer.

Jacob Storer: I find that the less you try to put your personality into your dancing, the more you appear. Because at the end of the day, my body is different from anyone else's body. It's my own body. And the same (likewise) for every other person there. And I feel like if I go to the material and trusting the material to do its job, if I'm not worried about adding a flavour to it, and I'm just worried about what I have to do at that moment, I am very present and that's already the transformation. It's the fact that I'm a different body doing what I need to do. So I think that's how I deal in repertory with the dance, which is to kind of get out of my own way.

VO: Jacob, Clinton and Laura Maria have all danced repertory with Rosas, but they’ve also been part of what we call “new creations” (that’s exactly what it says it is—new pieces, in creation). This means they can compare and contrast the 2 very different kinds of processes. 

Jacob Storer: It's interesting because I have been at Rosas in part of repertory and creation, right? I've made phrases that have been performed in the context of Rosas. 

VO: In a creation process, dancers are sometimes asked to contribute their ideas by developing movement material—“phrases” as Jacob just called it. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker guides the dancers through the development of phrases and eventually composes them into the piece. But when you create movement you start from yourself—your interests, your strengths. You work with what you know. But creating your own movement doesn’t necessarily push you outside of your box…

Jacob Storer: That's why I think repertory is important, because you are faced with a framework that you wouldn't be faced with otherwise. So, for example, if I was to get in the room and it's day whatever of creation and I have to make a phrase, it's going to be dependent on my mood: how much did I sleep last night? Do I have a stomach ache? Do I feel energetic? Am I happy? Am I sad? All of these things are going to influence what I'm making. Also my own personal dance history. Also my personal desires.  So when I have to learn a pre-existing role, then I have to start approaching it with, "okay, how do I bring myself to do what I have to do today?" 

VO: As opposed to new creations, repertory is a challenge because it takes you away from what you already know and extends you in directions you couldn’t imagine. Maybe that’s a reason why repertoire is used in schools... 

Tessa Hall: Could you talk a little bit about how you think repertory is or isn't useful in education?

Clinton Stringer: I find it challenging to step out of your habits. I always say, "this is how we do it. It's not how you're meant to dance. But maybe there's something you can take from this experience that will feed you." Because a lot of people are resistant to repertory, I find, and so I try to encourage people to let go of that prejudice and to try to understand how they could learn. I think it's maybe also because it's from the past and there's a resistance to the past because we are contemporary dancers.

Tessa Hall: Yeah, I was going to ask, what do you think that resistance is or...?

Clinton Stringer: It’s what drives contemporary dance is resisting what came before you. I mean, it's the only thing that we're good at, consistent with—is like, not doing what the previous person did.

Jacob Storer: I know it's a big question that's being questioned across the education world. I do think it's important to study repertory. If you look, for example, in the field of art, you train by replicating the Old Masters, right? Not saying it as, "this is a mandate and that these pieces should never be questioned," because I think it's always important to question the importance of things that have happened in the past. But for example, you learn a lot from doing repertory. From this one specific piece, you learn a way of composition, spatially. You learn a way of moving. I'm talking now about aesthetics or style. You learn a way of interpreting. You learn a way of learning. 

So for me, I think repertory does have a very important place in education because, specifically in dance, there is still a lot of ageism and you don't see so many performers over the age of 60. There is still this hierarchical classical ballet way of thinking that once you hit 40, you're done. I think it's ridiculous to think that there is a time you're not allowed on stage once you're 70. Maybe I can't physically do some specific dancing, but to be able to dance and perform... I think, of course you can dance when you're that old.

So I find it is important not to discard old things. I don't think it's beneficial for our field to discard dances that have happened in the past, and also not to discard dancers who have made those dances in the past who are now of an older generation. And there's this constant super neo-capitalistic approach that has filtered into the dance field because of the way we get our money, which is to produce, produce new, new, new, which I don't think is necessarily beneficial to the field. I don't think you should prioritise new creations, nor do I think we should prioritise old creations and repertory. I think that we need to find a really healthy balance between the two.

Laura Maria Poletti: The tricky thing with repertory is that not everybody is interested in it, because some people will just say, “oh, we're done with those works. We don't need to do it over and over again.” And I get it. However, I do think that there is a pedagogical value to it because it's also interesting to put yourself in someone else's shoes and also understand why you wouldn't want to do it, or why you wouldn't stand for it or align with those works anymore. I do believe that you do it in an embodied way, that you can have a conversation with the work only if you really physically invest in it, because otherwise I think it's a little bit easy to just say, “oh, I don't want to do repertory. I think that's like dated.” But have you really invested into the why it is dated? So I always encourage, even maybe the students who have a little bit more resistance towards the work to physically invest and to have that embodied conversation with the work, because I think it's important to question it. I think it's important to have a very critical sense of what those works are. Clinton says a beautiful thing. It's like you are wearing a costume. That piece of repertoire is like a costume that you wear, and it's not necessarily fitting you. But then if you do that physical work, I think the questions you have, it comes from a very relevant place. It comes from your own body and not from a theoretical outside external approach.

VO: We talked about how Rosas has many different approaches to reviving repertoire—sometimes more direct reenactments, but sometimes revivals that are about rewriting. That is, starting from the original idea but moving towards something else. I think a good example of rewriting is how Drumming is taught in PARTS. This is something both Clinton and Laura Maria can talk about. 

Clinton Stringer: We teach the original material, but then we try to encourage the students to almost make their own Drumming, so they make their own as if they were an original cast member. So they use the original material to make their own physical propositions—a solo transformation— and any duet or trio quintet they make will be according to their talents and limitations of what lifting and sharing weight is for them. So, following the lines of the piece and following the structure somehow of the piece, but definitely trying to get the students to access the material in their own way. However, there is still something that I try to insist on, which is this overarching spirit of the piece. And for Drumming, there is a sense of urgency that needs to be on stage. If you dance the piece, if you see the piece, there's this speed. I insist on that as a quality. But then to allow freedom in personal access.

Tessa Hall: But have you ever had moments where your approach to the piece, or your opinion of the piece shifted between performing and teaching?

Clinton Stringer: Yes, in different ways. Maybe Drumming is special because the way I teach Drumming is not a transmission in the traditional sense. It's a recreation inspired by the original. Especially the project I did last year in 2024, the Drumming XXL, where there were dancers from Senegal, and from Paris, from three different schools, so there were a lot of other influences being welcomed into the writing. And so that made it a very new and completely fresh take on the original material. So that also gave the piece a new filter, a new way to look at it.

VO: Sometimes, rewriting is also a matter of updating. Staging a piece differently, to reflect the context of today. So, what does that mean? On one hand, you could see repertoire as a historic artifact with no need for updating. Another option would be to see repertoire as an opportunity to re-imagine a piece in the present. 

Jacob Storer: I think if you look at the piece and you have a decade or more of time between the original piece, and then you look at it again and be like: "how does this fit today's climate?" And I talk of the climate being what's happening in the dance field, and what's happening also in the socioeconomic situations in the world. What choices do you make that would benefit the piece now? How do you make it current, now? And then at the same time but on the flip side, why would you change? Is there a reason to do that? 

VO: The question is, do you adapt the choreography to the changed world, or do you leave it as a historic object; a window into another time? There’s no one answer to this question, it’s just different approaches at the end of the day. And Rosas has experimented with both sides of this story.  

Sometimes the younger generation helps carry repertoire into the context of today. Laura Maria has a story about that from when she was teaching at PARTS…

Laura Maria Poletti: What I was always struck by is the ability of the students to really ask the right questions. To really ask me things that I would always be like “ah, it's true actually. Why is that so or why is that not so?” So they would have questioned in a very physical, embodied way. But especially with the group that did Fase the last time. They had really questions about how things were made and how things were displayed.

VO: Fase, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s piece from 1982, is set to four pieces of music by Steve Reich. One of them is a piece called Come Out. When Laura Maria was teaching this at PARTS, the students were curious about the history of this music. 

On an April day in Harlem, 1964, a fruit stand outside a shop was knocked over. Children rushed over to take the spilled fruit, but the shop owner blew his whistle to stop them. This caught the attention of the police and they started beating the kids. Daniel Hamm, a Black 19 year old, had to be taken to the hospital after being beaten so badly. It became known as The Little Fruit Stand Riot.

A couple of weeks later, a Hungarian shop owner in Harlem was stabbed and died. Daniel Hamm and 5 other young Black men were wrongly accused of this murder. They became known as the Harlem Six.

So how does this link to Come Out? In 1966, Steve Reich specifically composed this piece for a concert to raise funds to help the Harlem Six in their legal battle. In Come Out, he samples the voice of Daniel Hamm, recorded during police investigations.

Laura Maria Poletti: But anyways, the students really were upset that this whole context was never displayed when the piece was performed. Because for them, it was crucial that people would know about that piece of music. The beautiful thing about it is like we opened the conversation with Anne Teresa and and then from then on they started to write a context, and when they performed the piece, they made it clear that this had to be part of the program. And I thought that was a very creative response to that first frustration they had. And even myself, continuing with this work as a performer, I am a lot more attuned…when I hear Come Out, I hear it in a different way thanks to them.

And I also even have the wish that what they have put in their program would be in our program. So there is this whole back and forth. It's not that I didn't know about it, but maybe I didn't pay as much attention. It's where they put their focus that suddenly is very interesting because they shed light on things that you didn't think of or you didn't question and because of really trying to advocate for a dancer having agency over the works, I felt that was another step that they took that I never did. And I thought it was very brave and also very useful. And then when they did perform, I felt that this whole work they went through also gave them a totally different approach to the movements. And that was very, very beautiful to see.

VO: In reading about repertory I often come across the words “custodian” or “guardian” to describe people who transmit repertoire. I was curious to know how Jacob related to those words… 

Jacob Storer: The reason I don't like the word "guardian" is this weird militarian association I have with that word. It sounds way too, "I protect the work and it's only me who has a say." But at the same time, if you don't have someone who's concerned about what the piece was, if it transforms too much and then you still call it that piece, but it's not, that's also not fair to the piece — not to the work that has been done.

Tessa Hall: Because it's true, you are trying to pay respect to the object that is this piece, right?

Jacob Storer: Yeah, the entity or whatever you can call it, because it's not an object, it's not tangible. It's ephemeral, it's always live, it's the most contemporary art there is — the body.

Tessa Hall: I mean there are so many words it could be.

Jacob Storer: It's just semantics, but…

Tessa Hall: I mean, I like the image of being another link in the chain.

Jacob Storer: That's a beautiful way to think of it.

I would say a captain. Like a captain of a ship. You have to steer this. As someone who's putting this repertory on, you guide it. You don't control it because you're not all of these dancers dancing it, but you do have a role to bring these people from point A to point B. 

VO: Laura Maria spoke to me about how being a repertory dancer and transmitter goes beyond just being a job. For her, it’s a broader issue of cultural heritage and memory. 

Laura Maria Poletti: I am from Corsica and I come from a culture that is very orally transmitted—who was very orally transmitted. So we have a language. And because eventually that transmission process has been hindered (because of political decisions, there's a whole history behind it) I think I am really interested in why things will continue and why things will stop. And my dad is a musician, he's a singer, and he's been carrying that oral singing tradition—the polyphony. And his work has been his whole life has been to, like, kind of try to bring back to life things that were dead or things that are not written, you know, oral.

Tessa Hall: So he’s like a living archive of…

Laura Maria Poletti: Yes, yes. And he's carrying, like, all these, songs that no one… now it became popular again but at some point it was completely dying. So I think that stuck with me from a very young age. There are things that will continue and others that will die. Why is that? Like, who decides? And then I'm like, no wonder I went into repertory. Also again, the idea of the vessel pouring, things in and out. I continue that story, but in another way, through movement and like in another geographical context. But I do want to believe that I am carrying this work again over and over, just in a different way.

VO: So, what lessons have Jacob, Clinton and Laura Maria learned from being in the world of Rosas repertory? At this point in their careers, how do they relate to it?

Laura Maria Poletti:It's really humbling. You're part of something that will probably outlast you. And then realizing that is one thing and it's also accepting that you're just a piece of it and probably an important one, but also not so important, you know, in a way. And I think there is something also very freeing to that.  

What does it mean to me to bring that piece and to carry it through my body? It's actually ever changing. I think it's never a closed process. It's never “I found my way to do this thing, and now I stick to it” because I think that's when actually, that's where it dies. Then it becomes flat.

Clinton Stringer: You're breathing life into something that exists, but it exists in a moment in time. So I feel that responsibility of breathing life into that piece of art. 

Jacob Storer: There's more than one way to define yourself. I've danced many people, yet always me. And so it's interesting to like, to face that and to realise, okay, there's not one definition of who I am. And it's constantly evolving. You don't need to be cemented in a certain way because you can always be different. You can always change. You can always grow. You can always be somebody else for a day, or for the life of one piece. But yet you're still you. I'm still me. Yeah, that's the lesson I learned from repertory in general.

VO: What I learnt is that working with repertory is a hands on, active task. As Clinton put it, it’s about being an archaeologist searching through all the different versions of a piece across the years. Like an archaeologist, repertory transmission is like digging up information from the past that helps piece it all together again in the present. 

Laura Maria Poletti: As someone who comes from a culture who's basically dying because it's an oral tradition, you realize that tradition is a very dynamic process, and it's not this like idea that we have that it's something, you know, fixed in time and it never changes. And I find it so interesting to understand why things will stay and others will die. Why is it really healthy to let go of some of these things? Because archaeology, it also has this thing of it's an action you need to dig through, you need to… it also has this sense of…

Tessa Hall: Dirty, get your hands dirty.

Laura Maria Poletti: It’s like a hands on thing.

Tessa Hall: Yeah.

Laura Maria Poletti: It's really putting your hands, like, in the dirt, which I really enjoy. I think with the repertory work, maybe what I am bothered sometimes is the nostalgia that comes with it. And I think that can be a dangerous trap almost. But I think if you're really doing the work, really digging and keep on researching and let the investigation open then maybe you have less chances to fall into that nostalgic way of dancing or performing or… Then it can keep the work actual in the sense of like it's being re-actualized every time and every time it’s performed…

Tessa Hall: It's not in the past. It's actually in the present.

Laura Maria Poletti: Really present process. Yes.

You are listening to Body of Work. A podcast created by STUK, House for Dance, Image and Sound, in the city of Leuven. This series is developed in the frame of DanceMap, a European research project and network, funded by the European Union (Horizon Europe). 

The podcast was conceived by Delphine Hesters.

Katharina Smets worked on the edit and the scenario.

Tessa Hall, that's me, I did research and narration.

The interviews were done by myself, Katharina Smets and Delphine Hesters.

Teressa Van Eycken assisted the audio production.

The theme music for the podcast was composed by Inne Eysermans.

And the mix was done by Inne Eysermans & Yves De Mey.

You heard the voices of: Laura Maria Poletti, Clinton Stringer and Jacob Storer. 

Special thanks to Rosas and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and also to Klankverbond, for using their studio at Passa Porta. 

VO: GLOSSARY

The repertoire of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker that you heard mentioned in this episode were:

Fase from 1982, 

Rosas Danst Rosas from 1983, 

Erts from 1992, 

Grosse Fuge, which came out of Erts in 2002, 

Drumming from 1998, 

Rain from 2001, 

and Drumming XXL which was performed by the students of PARTS, École des Sables, in Senegal, and CNSM de Paris.