Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker receives Venice’s Golden Lion

Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has been awarded a Golden Lion career prize by the Venice Biennale. The lifetime achievement trophy Leone d’oro alla carriera per la danza was awarded to De Keersmaeker for the “original synthesis between formal rigour and pathos” embodied, said the jury, in her 1983 piece Rosas danst Rosas.

“Her poetic gestures expressed by the body had a significant impact on Western cultures towards an understanding of the body in theatre as a medium for experimentation with language,” said Virgilio Sieni, the director of the biennale’s dance section. “She positions bodies in experimentations that allow us to perceive man as he opens up to new spaces.”

De Keersmaeker’s award was one of three lifetime achievement awards handed out by the biennale: The others went to Greek composer Georges Aperghis for music and the Swiss director Christophe Marthaler for theatre.

De Keersmaeker and her troupe Rosas, based in Brussels, presented the piece Rain at the Dance Biennale in 2001, the dancers performing under a shower of silver strings to Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich.

The Golden Lions will be awarded on 27 June. Following the ceremony will be a presentation of Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, De Keersmaeker’s breakthrough piece from 1982. She will dance one of the parts herself.