ANNA TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER was only 23 when she established her company Rosas in 1983 and she has since gone on to choreograph numerous experimental works.

An earnest rebellion against traditional ballet’s conventions unites her varied output and this British premiere of Mitten wir im Leben sind — “in the midst of life” — is no exception.

The music itself is her subject. In a rare collaboration with famous cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, who plays all six suites of Bach’s cello concerto, De Keersmaeker choreographs from the music in a quest to create an affinity with it, as opposed to music being an accompaniment to the dance.
 
The production asserts a democratic defiance. All seats are priced equally and no orchestra pit or curtain distances performers from audience. Wearing simple, everyday clothes, dancers and cellist stroll onto the bare stage with the house lights still on.

The austere lack of sets or elaborate costumes forbid any distraction from the performance. The house lights dim and four dancers, occasionally joined by De Keersmaeker, fill the stage, always anchored by Queyras’s presence.

Rooted in acute observations of quotidian movement, the dancers test every possible articulation of their bodies. Rarely graceful and often awkward, like demented children escaping constricting school desks, they run furiously to staccato phrases, walk backwards hesitantly to quieter passages, leap, gesture, flay or jerk legs, arms, hands or heads or take small, comical, consecutive jumps.

Marie Goudot and Michael Pomero are inspired — she as a powerful, flexible sprite bursts with energy and sensitivity, while he twists and twirls his large frame improbably, like a Baroque Laocoon fighting his own demons, eyes supplicating the heavens for redemption. Both their duets with De Keersmaeker surprise with rare, tender and emotive interludes.
 
The choreographer only partially fulfils her difficult intention to embody Bach’s music with dance. There are moments of symbiosis but the 21st-century angst and alienation permeating the work is at odds with Bach’s more measured, 18th-century sensibility.

But the dancers’ and cellist’s expertise and resilience in performing for two hours without an interval is impressive, as is De Keersmaeker’s relentless commitment to experimentation.