In Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Radouan Mriziga set out to explore Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The starting point for this new choreographic work is the exquisite recording of Vivaldi’s composition by virtuosic violinist and long-time Rosas collaborator Amandine Beyer and her ensemble Gli Incogniti.

The Four Seasons is one of the most well-known, iconic and reproduced pieces of music; a veritable ‘hit’ of the classical repertoire. It is also a striking ode to nature. De Keersmaeker and Mriziga, who previously collaborated on 3ird5 @ w9rk(2020), share a keen interest in the observation of nature, geometry, and embodied abstraction. They also share a concern with our changing and increasingly troubling relationship to our natural environment. Contemplating the four seasons in nature by contemplating the nature of this musical composition not only inspires further explorations of patterns present in the natural world and celestial configurations as possible starting points for choreography, it also vividly brings to the surface the urgency of the impending climate crisis. Do we still have four seasons? In addition, Vivaldi wrote this music three hundred years ago in the Mediterranean, a region at the intersection of different continents. The Four Seasons thus also invites reflection on the circulations of knowledge, power, and histories this region represents.