Photo ©Anne Van Aerschot

164VANVOLXEM

OPENING FESTIVAL 30.1 > 22.2.2026

ROSAS + P.A.R.T.S. + ICTUS
Dancingkids / Platform K / workspacebrussels / Dancingkets

January 30 with dance | Tickets
January 31 in concert | Tickets
February 01 with dance | Tickets
at Rosas Performance Space, 164 Van Volxemlaan, 1190 Brussel

Hoketus by Louis Andriessen,

Sketches for a duet & live concert

Hoketus by Louis Andriessen: this musical hapax, unlike anything else in the history of music, caught the attention of Thierry de Mey and Anne Teresa when it was first performed in the late 1970s. The work is an important source of inspiration for ‘Rosas danst Rosas’.

It retains the American minimalist sense of gradual, rudimentary processes that are transparent to the audience, but distances itself from the contemplative Californian aesthetic: Hoketus exudes rebellious energy and a Stravinsky-esque taste for dissonance.

Andriessen was profoundly politically engaged, striving to embody a sense of the “aestheticization of politics” in the very texture of his music. His eloquent reflection in the preface to Worker's Union, written a year earlier, remains strikingly relevant:
####Only in the case of every player playing with such an intention that their part is an essential one, the work will succeed; just as in the political work.

The process is simple and diabolically virtuosic: two separate instrumental groups (on the left and right sides of the stage) fire chords at each other at full speed, like ping pong balls. The two groups do not play a single note simultaneously. The listener's brain reconstructs rhythmic patterns.