Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione

Last Updated on May 9, 2026

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Through de Keersmaeker’s Eyes

2.0 out of 5.0 stars

Anne Teresa de Keersmaker’s work often feels like a test of endurance for audiences.  The uncompromising Belgian choreographer has stripped dance of what she considers unnecessary flummery to arrive at an abstract and geometric style of movement, deliberately unacademic and seemingly artless.  De Keersmaeker’s company, Rosas, founded in 1983, is the main vehicle for her relentless exploration of the relationships between dance and other disciplines, including music.

Radouan Mriziga is a Brussels-based Moroccan dance maker, whose vocabulary relies on geometrical rigour and organic movement.  It’s not surprising, then, that given such an obvious commonality of interests, he should have joined forces with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.  They collaborated on3ird5 @ w9rk (no, me neither), which premiered in Brussels in 2020; their latest joint work, a 90-minute unbroken piece entitled Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention),  has reached Sadler’s Wells for a brief two-night run, performed by Rosas with Mriziga’s own A7LA5 (that reads as Atlas).

We’re told the piece is inspired by Vivaldi’s glorious, uplifting, and life-enhancing The Four Seasons, as recorded by the virtuosic violinist and long-time Rosas collaborator Amandine Beyer and her ensemble Gli Incogniti; yet, most of Il Cimento is performed in silence, broken only by heavy breathing, occasional birdsong, foot stomping, and the chattering of one dancer’s teeth.

The stage is stripped bare.  At the back, there’s a full-length panel with parallel lines of white neon tubes, with similar, but less profuse, arrays of neon tubes either side (the choreographers are credited with set and lighting design).  The work starts with a period of nothing but flashing neon lights, its seemingly inordinate length severely testing the audience’s patience.

Slowly, a man in white boxing shorts, a long mesh top and black trainers walks downstage.  Facing the audience, he performs a series of jerky movements, arms swivelling, knees alternately raised, hands clasped together, appearing to point. At times, he shakes his head so hard you can hear his teeth chattering.

At this point, the stage and the front of the stalls are lit solely by an orange neon bar beaming from the first circle, which provides a sickly, disquieting glow.  Gradually, three other men join the first one – all four will remain on stage for the work’s full duration, in their own feat of endurance mitigated only by the occasional break to slip into the exposed sidelines, towel off the sweat, change tops and drink water.

All four – Boštjan Antončič, Nassim Baddag, Lav Crnčević, José Paulo dos Santos – are remarkable movers, and appreciating their talent is one of the few rewards of watching Il Cimento.   Kitted out in outlandish costumes (costume design Aouatif Boulaich), which in one case involves a flimsy, chiffon-y dusty pink peignoir, they perform together, yet individually, each appearing to live in his own world. Their movements are linear and geometric, as are the patterns they trace when moving in unison.

In one coordinated sequence, two of the men perform a skilled, highly rhythmic tap dance (minus the heel/top metal plates), which seems to amuse them.  Later in the piece, one dancer breaks off from the group to launch into some break dancing, the meaning of which remains as elusive as that of everything else.

But what of the music? Snatches of Vivaldi’s concerti are heard at intervals – all too fleeting balm for the soul, indeed! – but none of the seasons are played in full.  The music seems incidental to what’s happening before our eyes; even though we’re told its intimate connection with nature provides the starting point for the choreographers’ intent to express their concern with what’s happening to the natural world.

The piece ends with a female voice reading a poem by Asmaa Jama, ‘We, the Salvage’, a highly symbolic meditation on the despoliation of nature.  Maybe it was there to provide retrospective meaning to what went before.  If so, I don’t think it worked.

Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione is at Sadler’s Wells 8 & 9 May

Sadler’s Wells Angel
Rosebery Avenue
London EC1R 4TN

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