›Shamelessly romantic‹ is how Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker describes her choreographic answer to Schönberg’s composition ›Verklärte Nacht‹ (›Transfigured Night‹) which is based on Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name about a woman who confesses to the man she loves that she is expecting a child from another man.

Originally staged in 1995 as a group piece for Rosas, De Keersmaeker’s critically acclaimed reworked version, which premiered during the Ruhrtriennale festival in 2014, brings the narrative aspect of the choreography to the foreground. Moving between fragile intimacy and operatic opulence, the emotional tension inherent in Dehmel’s love triangle resonates not only in the music but also in De Keersmaeker’s unusually expressive movement vocabulary which is partly based on the stylised poses of Rodin’s sculpted couples and also uses gestures and poses drawn from a manual illustrating how men can assist their partners during labour.