Reich for the Stars

By Chitra Ramaswamy

‘MY JAW dropped,” says Steve Reich, the minimalist music pioneer and arguably America’s greatest living composer. He is telling me about the first time he saw Fase, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s 1982 modern dance piece containing four movements choreographed to four of his compositions. It had only taken him 16 years to finally catch it when the Belgian choreographer brought her company, Rosas, to New York’s The Kitchen.

“It was the best choreography I had seen to my music by anyone,” he says, which is saying something considering his work has been used by major choreographers including Jiri Kylian, Jerome Robbins and Alvin Ailey. “Afterwards I went up to the head of the Lincoln Center Festival, who were making me their feature composer in 1999, and said: ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ He said: ‘Absolutely.’ So she did the piece at the Lincoln Center. That piece brought her to international attention, and deservedly so.”

Reich’s music would go on to form the backbone of Rosas’ repertoire, its tight rhythms, melodic presence and repetition mirroring the Belgian choreographer’s spare yet theatrical dance. Like Stravinsky and Balanchine, and Cage and Cunningham, Reich and De Keersmaeker have shared a long and fruitful history.

“The whole trajectory of Rosas has been shaped by regular rendezvous with Reich’s music,” says the formidable choreographer, described by one critic as “a major artist who opens doors, even batters some down”.

She discovered Reich when she was studying at Mudra, the school founded by Maurice Bejart, and instantly felt his music was “an invitation to dance because of its strong pulse”. When I ask the avant-garde composer why he thinks choreographers are so drawn to his music, he says: “When I write pieces and hit on something that works, I just want to get up and move.”

It was only last year, though, in celebration of Reich’s 70th birthday that De Keersmaeker put together 25 years’ worth of work. Combining existing choreography with two new pieces, Steve Reich Evening will receive its UK premiere at EIF. Featuring seven works that date back to the early 1980s, set to Reich’s music from 1968 to 1979, it’s a comprehensive and thrilling focus on the relationship between two modern masters.

Two movements from Fase are on the bill, including the classic Piano Phase, a hypnotic duet for two female dancers who spin round and round, sometimes in tandem, sometimes out of step, with a further shadow following their pendulous arm movements. In one of the new works, Eight Lines, eight dancers move to the musical line of eight instruments. In another, Four Organs, set to Reich’s scandalous 1970 composition, “the dance actually does the reverse of the music”, explains De Keersmaeker, so the movement slows down as the sound speeds up.

“It’s an aggressive piece of music,” says Reich of Four Organs. “It was first performed in 1970 in Boston. Michael Tilson Thomas wanted to take it to Carnegie Hall but I didn’t realise the programme would be Liszt, Mozart and myself. I think he was setting up a scandal and it worked. There was so much noise coming from the audience that he had to scream out numbers to the orchestra. He was jumping up and down shouting to me: ‘This is history!’”

They don’t get the chance to catch up often but there is much mutual respect and admiration between choreographer and composer. Reich was nervous when he first heard about the concept of a whole evening of dance choreographed to his music (played by the Ictus Ensemble in Edinburgh) but when he saw it last year in Rome, he was blown away.

“It’s an extraordinarily successful amalgam of work,” he says. “I remember back in the 1980s getting a letter from someone I’d never heard of with a very long name asking if she could choreograph to some of my music and would members of my ensemble go over to Belgium and work with her. They did go and when they came back they said: ‘You have to check this woman out. She’s remarkable.’

“To have one of the world’s greatest choreographers work with my music in depth really is satisfying.”

Steve Reich Evening, Edinburgh Festival Theatre (0131-473 2000), Friday until August 17, 7.30pm www.eif.co.uk

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