A week of contemplating dance legends began with a bravura gala in celebration of Rudolf Nureyev and ended with an austere meditation on Bach’s Goldberg Variations from the visionary Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Though the links between them were not much in evidence (the gala went very much for classical showing-off rather than the pioneering curiosity that also shaped Nureyev’s career), the dancer who regarded Bach as sacred would much have admired the seriousness of De Keersmaeker’s response to the composer’s late masterpiece.
The Goldberg Variations is a revelatory piece. De Keersmaeker (in sheer black dress) and the Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov (in shorts and white vest) enter in semi-darkness and in silence. The stage, designed by Minna Tikkanen, has a pile of crumpled gold foil on one side, a panel of silver foil on the other, and the piano prominent towards the front. Her lighting shifts beautifully, sometimes casting De Keersmaeker in shadow and sometimes illuminating her.
