This year’s da:ns focus unfolds under the theme On Loop, a meditation on repetition as both structure and sensation. From 23–25 April 2026, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay opens the season with Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich by Rosas, the internationally acclaimed company led by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. First premiering in 1982, Fase is widely recognised as a cornerstone of contemporary dance—an early work that not only propelled De Keersmaeker onto the global stage, but also reshaped how choreography could enter into rigorous, generative dialogue with music.

Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich was choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s very first performance when she was only 21 years old. Fase comprises three duets and one solo, created and directly named after four repetitive compositions by American minimalist Steve Reich: Piano Phase (1967), Violin Phase (1967), Come Out (1966), and Clapping Music (1972).

De Keersmaeker used the structure of Reich’s music to develop an independent movement idiom that does not merely illustrate the music but also adds a new dimension to it. Both the music and the dance start from the principle of phase shifting through tiny variations: movements that are initially perfectly synchronous gradually start slipping and sliding, resulting in an ingenious play of continuously changing forms and patterns.

Precise, rigorous in execution and hypnotic in movement, Fase made an immediate impact upon its debut and was swiftly lauded as a groundbreaking work by audience and critics alike. This landmark piece also set the trajectory for De Keersmaeker’s career and her company, Rosas. Most recently in October 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale, also known as the Nobel Prize for the Arts, in Tokyo, Japan.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker had always danced Fase herself. In 2018, she passed it on to a new generation of dancers for the first time in the work’s history.

There will also be a masterclass focused on Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, conducted by Tale Dolven. The class will begin with a short warm up before participants learn dance material from the piece and get to explore the choreographic structures that underpin this iconic work. This is an intermediate-level masterclass designed for dancers who are actively training and can engage with contemporary dance techniques on a deeper level. Pre-registration is required.

More than four decades on, Fase remains radical in its restraint and enduring in its influence. Its looping structures—echoed in both movement and music—invite us to reflect on what repetition makes possible: how meaning accumulates through return, how precision sharpens sensation, and how defiance can give way to discovery. Revisited, restaged, and re-encountered across generations and geographies, Fase continues to ask to be danced again and again. In doing so, it embodies the poetics at the heart of On Loop—where repetition is not stasis, but a living practice of renewal.

Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich plays from 23rd to 25th April 2026 at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre. Tickets available here