For the second time this season we are presenting a choreographic work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in which she herself dances. This new production, which will premiere at the Avignon Festival in July 2010, is a piece for nine dancers and four musicians. Characteristic of the choreographer's oeuvre is the meticulous choice of musical score and its dramaturgic 'dissection'. Every one of her dance performances, however diverse, is based on this. After Bach and Webern in 'Zeitung', the Beatles in 'The Song' and Mahler in '3Abschied', this time the point of departure is the 'ars subtilior', a complex and intellectual fourteenth-century musical form based on dissonance and contrast. The style developed at a time when the social, political and religious pillars of medieval society had been shattered. It was a period of upheaval in which the plague was rife and the church divided by internal conflicts. Today this upheaval appears to be more topical than ever. In contrast to the complexity and elusiveness of life, De Keersmaeker puts forward the body. Its power and vitality as well as its vulnerability and its mortality.