What would it take for a choreography to be performed as an exhibition? This question constitutes the starting point for Work/Travail/Arbeid. In response, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker reimagined her piece Vortex Temporum for the radically different temporal, spatial, and perceptual conditions of a museum-like environment. The resulting exhibition was on view for nine weeks at WIELS in Brussel. Afterwards an abridged version travelled to the Centre Pompidou, Tate Modern and MoMA.
In an attempt to do justice to the impressive project in a cinematographic way, filmmaker and writer Eric de Kuyper opted for a radical approach that first and foremost highlights the relationship between the dance and the musical score by Gérard Grisey. Babette Mangolte's camera work is equally essential to the end-result, capturing the dancers of Rosas and the musicians of Ictus with a limpid clarity.
A continuous showing of the six-hour-long film, ranging over a period of three days at WIELS, offers the viewer the possibility of attending the film’s screening at any chosen time and length. In a way, it also allows for an experience closest to that of the original dance-exhibition itself.