“A masterful Meskerem Mees guides you through a tempestuous dance performance.” - Focus Knack
“Dance company Rosas whirls across the stage like a storm in ‘Exit Above’.” - De Tijd
"A compelling spectacle that constantly takes the audience by surprise." - Le Soir
Read co-producer Kaaitheater’s response, which AB fully supports, to the reports about Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's leadership here.
Read Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s personal statement here.
For EXIT ABOVE, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker retraces her steps: to the roots of dance, the roots of Western pop music. Since her earliest work, ‘my walking is my dancing’ is one of her guiding principles: walking as a primary form of movement, so familiar that we hardly stop to think about it. Also in terms of the music, De Keersmaeker embarks on a journey towards a starting point that is in fact an intersection: the roots of pop music, the blues, and its mysterious ‘blue notes,’ in-between zones, between major and minor, sorrow and joy. 
The starting point for the performance is the song Walking Blues by legendary blues artist Robert Johnson; even though the journey leads back to Der Wanderer by Schubert, the best-known singer-songwriter of the 19th Century. Meskerem Mees, an upcoming Flemish singer-songwriter with Ethiopian roots, will compose a series of variations, permutations, and other adaptations of 'walking songs,’ together with Jean-Marie Aerts, sound architect of TC Matic, the legendary Belgian 80s rock formation around singer Arno, and with dancer and guitarist Carlos Garbin. 
In EXIT ABOVE, walking as primal motion and the blues as musical source meet. Choreographically, De Keersmaeker always moves from organically opening up simple movement material toward spatial and physical complexity, using precise geometrical patterns. EXIT ABOVE explores the tension between marching together and stepping out, between romantic solitary ‘wandern’ (wandering) and the political potential of a group of unarmed people walking together, the individual and the collective, the line and the circle. The act of walking runs counter to the hegemony of functionality and efficiency. It is an effort that produces nothing aside from the passing of time and the crossing of space. However, walking also generates thoughts and reminiscences that reveal the extent to which our inner world is also a landscape – a landscape that can often only be traversed on foot.
Choreografie / Chorégraphie / Choreography
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Gecreëerd met en gedanst door / Créé avec et dansé par / Created with and Danced by
Abigail Aleksander, Jean Pierre Buré, Lav Crnčević, José Paulo dos Santos, Rafa Galdino, Carlos Garbin, Nina Godderis, Solal Mariotte, Meskerem Mees, Mariana Miranda, Ariadna Navarrete Valverde, Cintia Sebők, Jacob Storer
Ook gedanst door / Aussi dansé par / Also Danced by
Pierre Bastin, Nathan Felix-Rivot, Robson Ledesma, Margarida Ramalhete
Muziek / Musique / Music
Meskerem Mees, Jean-Marie Aerts, Carlos Garbin