The shift in phase The music of Steve Reich is great for illustrating contemporary choreographic numbers. Despite the fact that it has been thirty-five years since the production, they look no less fresh in the modern world.
Unique Belgian dancer and choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmacker, a man who can without exaggeration be called the Belgian Pina Bausch, in 1982 depicted four different reprises for minimalist music in the technique of phase shift. His most famous pieces were Piano Phase (1967), Come Out (1966), Violin Phase (1967) and Clapping Music (1972). Despite the fact that it would be more logical to arrange the works in chronological order, the film crew, together with director Thierry De Me - the brother of the second dancer Michelle Anna De Me - decided to start with the brightest episode to the music of Piano Phase.
Marvelously, the combination of visual series and audio magnetizes attention from the very first bars. In the center of the screen are two identical girls, one of whom is a choreographer. Their images are so similar that the change of positions does not affect the development of the plot, especially since the author of the number chose a dance course that is absolutely identical to music - the synchronization and divergence of the movements of the two dancers. An additional sense of the presence of others in the room is achieved by creating three additional shadows behind the ballerinas - one shadow between the girls and two on the sides.
Simple movements do not require special concentration and memorization of positions. Everything is very simple and minimalistic, but behind this simplicity there is a huge work not only on rhythm, but also on directing. Banal repetition would be boring very soon, if not a change of angles and play with the light. Therefore, during the remaining time of the play, the viewer watches the beautiful moves in the production of the picture. The camera then catches the frontal angle of the performers, then picks up the whirlwind of the movement of the dancers from the corner, then makes a turn by one hundred and eighty degrees, changing the ballerinas in places. Additional contrast is created by playing with light in the white-blue range. The magnificent vector laid by Anna Teresa, who herself participates in the performance, returns us at the end of the musical number to the same position from which it began.
However, the bar set in the first episode was too high, so the second part of the Come Out movie looks more like a pause, still reminding us of the past miracle. In this case, Michelle Anna De Me and Anna Teresa De Keersmacker are sitting on chairs, working on camera only with the top of their bodies. The model of the scheme is identical and is achieved by hand gestures and a sharp departure of the camera.
Much more interesting and convincing is the third part. Continuing to explore the musical phases and taking Violin Phase as a basis, the viewer this time moves to the stage, located among the natural landscape, the background for which are trees. This time, Anna Teresa put a solo number for herself, without the help of a companion. She moves in a circle in an elegant dance, drawing lines with her feet in the sand. The emotional development of composition and choreography carries the image of the heroine through the delineated area, first dividing the circle into four parts, then four more. New dynamics are introduced due to the camera’s rapid orbital motion of three hundred and sixty degrees. Climax, stop in the center, intermission!
The last and shortest production on Clapping Music can hardly be called an epilogue, however, despite the fact that all the brightest is already behind, the author continued to please with a variety of palettes. The counterpoint in the visual series to the typical claps in music is the emphasis on the legs. The dancers bend, balancing on their socks, and the camera gradually moves away, showing in the finale all the performers (and music included) of this magnificent production.