"Raga For The Rainy Season / A Love Supreme" (M: John Coltrane)

This is Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in the midst of Indian spirituality and a jazzy love-stricken bout, in a shower of overwhelming emotions in Vienna’s Imperial Theater (Burgtheater). Her most recent two-part piece “Raga for the Rainy Season / A Love Supreme” brings together the most highly renowned contemporary Belgian choreographer with her famous sensorium of musical specialties consisting of far east and modern African-western sound. “I would like to bring to people something like happiness.” These are the words tenor saxophonist John Coltrane who passed away in 1967 used to describe his interest in and the mystical power of religious music from the far east. “A Love Supreme,” Coltrane’s marvelous musical creed of 1964, is the music to which four dancers of Keersmaeker’s company “Rosas” embark on a search to find an “order of happiness.” In “Raga for the Rainy Season” a woman pines, waiting for her lover to return. The sanskrit word “raga” means both “color” and “mood.” These are the elements the entire body of traditional Indian music is based upon. In a live interpretation of “Raga Mian Malhar” singer Sulochana Brahaspati tells of the sorrows of people waiting as Keersmaeker’s nine dancers are swept away by the music of the rainy season. Mysticism and sensuality as well as meditation and improvisation are the determining factors of their dance.