Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Mechelen, 1960), an innovator of dance, studied at the Mudra Dance School in Brussels and the Tisch School of the Arts in New York. She debuted in 1980 with Asch, er first choreographic work, and established her reputation two years later with Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich. Since then De Keersmaeker has established herself as one of the most progressive, influential and celebrated artists of contemporary dance. In 1983 she created the breakthrough work Rosas danst Rosas, at the same time establishing the dance company Rosas. From the very start, her choreography was grounded in a rigorous exploration of the relationship between dance and music, as seen in her work Bartók/Mikrokosmos (1987) and Achterland (1990). From 1992 to 2007 De Keersmaeker was choreographer in residence at the Brussels Opera House De Munt/La Monnaie. In 1995, in collaboration with this establishment, she founded an international school for contemporary dance, the Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S). In the course of her career she has created an extensive performance oeuvre, in which the musical structures of various traditions are paired with the strict rules and formal principles of geometry, mathematics, the natural world and social structures. The results provide a unique perspective on the body’s articulation in space and time. The dance company Rosas has appeared several times at the Holland Festival, most recently with the impressive Vortex Temporum (2014), based on Gérard Grisey’s eponymous spectralist work. Bach’s sonatas and fugues were central to De Keersmaeker’s Toccata (1993), which also appeared at the Holland Festival. Now, in The Six Brandenburg Concertos, De Keersmaeker returns to an early enthusiasm, taking Bach’s concerti grossi as her starting point.