Thierry De Mey

Three percussionists each have a small table as their only instrument. The variety of tones is ensured by the different striking modes. The positions of the fingers and hands and the rhythmic figures are codified in a repertoire of original symbols used in the score.

La Valse is dance a film by Thierry De Mey based on the choreography created on Maurice Ravel’s La Valse as the final part of ZOO’s performance Accords. Created as part of the triptych Equi Voci, the film La Valse exists in versions for one or three screens.

Directed by Thierry de Mey.

Ten shorts by Thierry De Mey set to music by ten composers with ten danced phrases choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and performed by Rosas. These ten films encapsulate the best of De Keersmaeker and De Mey's collaboration: twenty years of assiduously practicing variation, of perpetually inventing algorithms, filters, and formulae that twist movement and space according to the capricious mathematics of pleasure. All of this is filmed - O Belgitude! - in exquisite flower-filled gardens and under impressionistic drizzling rain.

"Fase" consists of three duets and one solo dance, choreographed to four repetitive compositions by the American minimalist musician, Steve Reich: Piano Phase, Come Out, Violin Phase and Clapping Music. Reich allows his tones to gradually shift in rhythm and melody and between the instruments. The choreography applies the same phase-shifting principle. The purely abstract movements are executed so perfectly that they seem almost mechanical and yet affect us in a strange way.

A short film for three pairs of hands and three tables, based on a notable composition by the director.

A short film for three pairs of hands and three tables, based on a notable composition by the director.

Performance directed by Thierry de Mey.

In musical terminology, the term " study " designates pieces to approach a specific problem : study for arpeggios, for the left-handed etc. The question here is how to merge dancing footage with elements of fiction. What is the right tone, the golden proportion to tell/dance the stories without resorting to techniques of a musical or a ballet ? New ways of telling a story: this is, without a doubt, a critical challenge for dance today. Twenty-one micro fictions by four Cie Michèle Anne De Mey dancers in witch the educational aspect of experimentation soon gives way to the pleasur of joyful poetics: an original blend of tender insolence and srtict elegance.

In musical terminology, the term " study " designates pieces to approach a specific problem : study for arpeggios, for the left-handed etc. The question here is how to merge dancing footage with elements of fiction. What is the right tone, the golden proportion to tell/dance the stories without resorting to techniques of a musical or a ballet ? New ways of telling a story: this is, without a doubt, a critical challenge for dance today. Twenty-one micro fictions by four Cie Michèle Anne De Mey dancers in witch the educational aspect of experimentation soon gives way to the pleasur of joyful poetics: an original blend of tender insolence and srtict elegance.

Thierry De Mey filmed Rosas danst Rosas in the former technical school of architect Henry Van de Velde in Leuven. The film version is much shorter than the show itself. In his film Thierry De Mey opts for a heavily ‘inter-cut’ version in which, apart from the cast of four dancers from 1995 and 1996, he also has all the other performers from the long history of the show dance along. He makes maximum use of the geometrical and spatial qualities of the Van de Veldes building. Incidentally, the building was thoroughly renovated straight after the film was made, making it one of the last testimonials to the original architecture. The film was shown on all of the major European television channels and also had a cinema career in the ‘art house circuit’.

Thierry De Mey filmed Rosas danst Rosas in the former technical school of architect Henry Van de Velde in Leuven. The film version is much shorter than the show itself. In his film Thierry De Mey opts for a heavily ‘inter-cut’ version in which, apart from the cast of four dancers from 1995 and 1996, he also has all the other performers from the long history of the show dance along. He makes maximum use of the geometrical and spatial qualities of the Van de Veldes building. Incidentally, the building was thoroughly renovated straight after the film was made, making it one of the last testimonials to the original architecture. The film was shown on all of the major European television channels and also had a cinema career in the ‘art house circuit’.

"Floréal" is the name of a garden city in a district of Brussels (Boitsfort). Hundreds of small houses with black and yellow woodwork, in streets named after flowers. This garden city was a first attempt to solve the problem of workers' housing after the First World War. A cooperative system ruined any hope of speculation since the land capital had to remain the property of the community. The director, who lived in Floréal until he was 18, filmed his "encounter" with this neighbourhood. A double portrait of its inhabitants and its architecture, sometimes reduced to abstract motifs, punctuated by the minimalist music composed by him.

A short documentary about the creation process of Rosas danst Rosas, the performance that forced Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s international breakthrough and has become a benchmark in the history of postmodern dance. This documentary, directed by Stefaan Decostere for the BRT cultural programme Het Gerucht [The Rumour, ed.], uses fragments of rehearsals and interviews with De Keersmaeker and composer Thierry De Mey, offering a glimpse of the choreographic creative process in which repeated abstract movements play a key role.