In Hoppla!, two choreographies by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker are brought together and performed to the music of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók: Mikrokosmos, seven short works for two pianos, and Quatuor no. 4, Bartók’s fourth string quartet.

The reading room of the Ghent University library, designed by the renowned architect Henry Van de Velde, serves as location. In the film the music is performed live by the pianists Walter Hus and Stefan Poelmans on the one hand and by the Dutch Mondriaan Quartet on the other. Mikrokosmos is a “pas de deux”: for the first time a male dancer enters Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s universe.

Four female dancers perform to the string quartet. In Van de Velde’s open space lit by large windows, the black clothing of the dancers sharply outlines their movements. One senses an immense complicity between the musicians and the dancers: the exhilaration of playing music together and dancing simultaneously is as it were the artistic motor of this project. In Hoppla!, Bartók’s dansant music, De Keersmaeker’s inventive choreography, Van de Velde’s austere space, and Wolfgang Kolb’s dynamic editing merge into one enormous convincing composition.