Body of Work. Doing Dance Heritage

In this introductory episode we lay out the episodes of this season of the Body of Work podcast, and take the opportunity to speak with Delphine Hesters, coordinator of dance heritage at STUK.  Sound featured in the episode: Stage recordings from Bartók / Beethoven / Schönberg , by Rosas/Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, recorded by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes. Music: Grosse Fuge, op.133, by Lu...

THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER, by Jan Martens, premiered in 2014. Now, 11 years later, this complex and exhausting choreography has returned to the stage as THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER 2.0. During the final month of rehearsals before the premiere, we went into the studio to meet the people behind this revival. We hear what it takes to pass on this highly demanding work - from the new cast of dancers, to rehears...

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 us...

When we think of dance repertoire, we think of pieces that are passed on from generation to generation. But Alain Platel’s Out of Context – For Pina is different. After premiering in 2010 and touring the world extensively, its time on stage was due to end. Until the cast of Out of Context had another idea… 15 years later, the same dancers who created the piece are still performing it at least once...

In 1982, before her company Rosas even existed, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker premiered Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich . Over the years, Fase has been passed on to multiple generations of dancers, meaning that over 40 years later, the story of this piece continues. In 2025, STUK’s annual dance heritage festival, Body of Work - Unfolding Fase , was fully built around this classic in...

This final episode takes the opportunity to further unravel the question of ‘doing’ dance heritage from multiple perspectives. Moving beyond the stage and studio, we travel around Europe to meet Madeline Ritter, initiator of DanceMap and a leading advocate of dance heritage, Franz Anton Cramer with a background in archiving dance, Timmy De Laet, a dance studies professor at the University of Antwe...