Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Rain at Sadler's Wells

Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is bringing her 2001 work Rain to Sadler’s Wells this summer, as part of the venue’s contemporary classics series.

De Keersmaeker has been creating experimental dances since the early 1980s and Rain is full of the runs, falls, off-centre leans, kicking legs and breath-led floorwork that audiences have come to expect from her brand of bare-foot modern movement.

Set to the driving rhythms of Music for Eighteen Musicians, a minimalist score composed by De Keersmaeker’s long-time collaborator Steve Reich, what makes this production distinctive is how she has methodically arranged that movement.


De Keersmaeker is fascinated by mathematical structure and the geometric use of space. In Rain, the movement motifs have been concocted to push these concepts to the absolute limit.

Simultaneously, the choreography endeavours to detail each small change in the complex soundscape.

This means that sometimes the group of 10 dancers – three men and seven women – perform all together, showering the audience with their exuberance. At other times, the group breaks apart to dance in trios, duos, individually… every conceivable combination is explored.

The shifting patterns feature infinite variations of perpetual movement. These are frequently repeated to create an exhilarating animated landscape in response to the music, played by the Ictus Ensemble.

Hardcore contemporary dance fans will insist that, on this occasion, news of rain in June ought not to dampen your spirits. Still, a friendly warning to newcomers – this is high-intensity conceptual art that might, at times, seem to take itself a tad too seriously.