喔哟！

In the film Hoppla! made by Wolfgang Kolb, two choreographies by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker are brought together and performed to the music of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók: Microkosmos, seven short works for two pianos and Quatuor nr. 4, Bartók's fourth string quartet. The reading room of the University of Ghent library, designed by the famous architect Henry van de Velde (1863-1957), served as the location. During filming the music was performed live by the pianists Walter Hus and Stefan Poelmans and by the Netherlands Mondriaan Quartet. Mikrokosmos is a 'pas de deux': for the first time a male dancer enters Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's universe. Four girls/women dancers perform to the string quartet. In Van de Velde's open space lit by large windows the black clothing of the dancers sharply outlines their movements. One senses an immense complicity between the musicians and the dancers: the exhilaration of playing music together and dancing simultaneously is as it were the artistic motor of this project. In Hoppla!, Bartók's dansant music, De Keersmaeker's inventive choreography, Van de Velde's austere space, and Wolfgang Kolb's dynamic editing are equally merged into one enormous convincing composition: therefore Hoppla! can be rightfully considered to be one of the milestones of the, still in its infancy, 'video-dance genre'.