by Leigh Witchel
William Forsythe will be 73 at the end of the year. He’s not playing the elder statesman. Well, in some ways he is – he has revisited his older works. But not as a retrospective; he changes them at almost every restaging. The big news was that as part of his ongoing collaboration with Boston Ballet Forsythe restaged “Artifact Suite,” and added a new section, “Part I (Défilé),” to the beginning.
These changes aren’t the kind artists make to fix something that grated at them, or perfectionists make to work towards a definitive version. They’re more like a homeowner who rearranges the furniture every few years because he’s bored with it the way it was. And because he can.
As they do, the program notes nattered on about Forsythe’s inspiration being Paris Opera Ballet’s tradition of a défilé: an exhibition of all the company’s dancers. And as usual, you should take anything Forsythe communicates about his own work with several canisters of salt. The name doesn’t give many clues; if the new work is a défilé, so are all parts of “Artifact Suite.” They all deploy the company in much the same way. Let’s look at the work instead of what he says about it.
In an informal conversation with Mikko Nissinen, the company’s Artistic Director, he recounted that at one of the late rehearsals Part I was approximately 12 minutes. On the next night it was over half an hour. By the time opening night rolled around, it had settled to about 25 minutes. But there were still changes from Friday to Saturday night.
If you follow Forsythe, the most striking thing about this staging is that the suite, first performed in 2004, now has an entire section of it not derived from the 1984 full-length work. It definitively splits “Artifact Suite” off from “Artifact” as two separate works.
But first, the company danced “Approximate Sonata,” a 25-year-old work originally done for Ballett Frankfurt. A series of four pas de deux, it was another example of how much elasticity there is in the performance of Forsythe’s work.
The action began about five minutes before the lights dimmed. Thom Willem’s music started with a low whistle and a pulse like a heartbeat. A small sign had a single word on it: “Ja.” In other stagings, such as Toronto in 2019, the translucent sign said “Yes.” Evidently Boston has more German speakers. Throughout the work, the back scrim rose slowly up and down. It’s something that could only happen in a theater, and it set us up as spectators and voyeurs.
Four couples danced a series of pas de deux. The first took classical positions and distorted them by pushing the classical axis of the spine, while adding in influences from club and street dance. On Friday, Lia Cirio and John Lam danced the duet almost as an argument, with the movement phrases as periods and exclamation points. In the midst of the eely partnering, Ms. Cirio lay down, picked her leg straight up and flexed her foot. Exclamation point. The role was a good one for her; she projected more emotional focus and clarity than she did in the October program.
On Saturday night, Haley Schwan and Lia’s brother, Jeffrey, made the opening of the same duet about how they could push their spines into curves as extreme as a sine wave. Each couple found its own relationship. Mr. Cirio and Schwan smiled at one another; and the duet was pleasant to watch no matter how extreme the vocabulary and partnering. He faked her out, then really gave her his hand. She smiled and then leaned into it. They had put us at ease, working with a mix of physical extremity and playfulness.
Even with the difference in tone, there was commonality at the root. With both couples, the pas de deux had a sense of friendly competition between worthy opponents. Both Ms. Cirio and Schwan exited to the side, leaving their partners at center; Schwan exited almost like a joke on Mr. Cirio. He made the isolations he did after she left look like breakdancing. Lam was less razor-sharp and more rhythmic, like he was in a doo-wop group.
The lights went out and came back on in a transition from the man’s solo to the second couple, Crystal Serrano and Graham Johns or Lauren Herfindahl and Paul Craig. Willem’s synthesized score ponged like steel drums. The mood shifted, and it felt as if there was more commentary within the choreography on pas de deux itself.
Both couples were about volume. Serrano did big open arabesques and penchés; she pulled away from Johns as he braced her. Herfindahl, who is also tall with high extensions, made the poses long and glamorous. She kicked Craig’s head – literally – in a penché in attitude.
To finish the duet, the woman joined the other three women to make a quartet, then the men arrived to form a quadrille of finicky ports de bras and tendus, like a parody of ballet etiquette. This led into the third duet, for either Daniela Fabelo and Daniel Durrett or Viktorina Kapitonova and Alec Roberts.
The sense of melancholy and regret as Fabelo avoided Durrett’s gaze as she dipped low over his arm recalled “Swan Lake.” There even seemed to a brief quoted pose with the back braced and one leg stretched long against the floor.
If there’s going to be a duet that is a riff on Odette, Kapitonova’s going to get cast in it. Feathers run in her blood. She ate up every penché and meaningful glance. She’s beautifully Russian-trained but not bogged down in it. She luxuriated in the long, slow extensions and poses but met the distortions of line and the speed of the choreography more than halfway.
Roberts released her and headed to the back. She made her way to the side, her bent leg leading the way; Kapitonova turned her exit into a slow, sinuous lament. Left alone, both Durrett and Roberts were explosive in the man’s solo to crackling music, moving between slow poses, and quick jumps and turns.
Sage Humphries and Schuyler Wijsen or Addie Tapp and Tyson Clark danced next. The woman in the fourth duet sports the one enigmatic variation in costume: she wore neon green pants. Neither couple came together immediately. They moved for a while on their own paths before they met, arms overhead.
Wijsen whirled around, all baroque curlicues. Humphries looked rapturous, delighted to be onstage. In the Saturday cast, Clark favored force over lines; his elbows never lost their angles to form a soft curve, but he threw himself into the steps. Tapp was a long drink of water, enjoying the mischief of her sudden movements. She even got Clark to smile. Once.
As they left, the first couple returned for a brief reprise. You could see here more than anywhere else how much who happened to be dancing mattered. Mr. Cirio and Schwan had a collaborative tone throughout; you could sense him helping her in the complex moves and drags.
The work suddenly broke the fourth wall, veering between performance and rehearsal. You couldn’t hear them, but from the body and hand motions, it was clear they were discussing what they were dancing. Schwan laughed and kept nodding; you could see they were happy.
That communication only happened for a moment with Ms. Cirio and Lam. In both casts, the woman moved into a complicated final phrase as the man observed, but Schwan kept checking back with her partner and Ms. Cirio didn’t. For her, the emphasis was on the long phrase itself as the curtain descended while she was still dancing. For Schwan, it was the dialogue.
Given that Forsythe was changing things even during its run, it should be no surprise that there was only a single cast of the first, new part of “Artifact Suite.” Part I in some ways fit seamlessly in front of the rest of the ballet. In other ways it felt like the new wing of a building where some of the original paint and building materials were no longer available.
The score was created by Forsythe and Boston Ballet’s musical director Mischa Santora. It was a soundscape of low plucked strings and long notes; less a composition but a series of tones and rhythms. Forsythe had little need for melody here beyond repetition.
Part I is a series of episodes punctuated, as in the “Chaconne” that is now Part II, by the curtain descending. This audience had been primed for this by the moving scrim in “Approximate Sonata.” Unlike the thud the front curtain makes when it hits the ground in Part II (which was once much louder), it goes up and down in Part I slowly and silently. This suggests different reasons for the curtain drop – in the first part to provide a border, but in the second, to interrupt.
The new section began with María Álvarez, wearing a pale leotard and soft slippers, alone on the stage. In the original 1984 work that character was also streaked with mud; she’s still referred to colloquially as the Mud Woman.
To pounding chords, Álvarez moved her arms rapidly. Rotating them round, moving them at chest level as if driving, or pulling her hands out like one of the Fates, it felt like the mechanical operation of a pointless, but sinister, machine.
The curtain closed; when it rose she was replaced by Ms. Cirio, walking and clapping in a motif that occurred throughout the entire work. She then introduced a new motif that wasn’t from any other version of “Artifact,” an asymmetrical arm position: one arm down, one cocked out like the proverbial Little Teapot. Her brother and Derek Dunn joined her to do steps with fussy elegance. Álvarez reappeared from the side, and Ms. Cirio almost confronted her. The teapot arms became a hostile inquiry.
The piece continued in hermetic episodes, introducing motifs from the later sections, occasionally breaking with its logic. Ms. Cirio led a diagonal of women, but Álvarez danced in the diagonal as well. It made sense as movement and blocking; it got Álvarez where she needed to be for her next section. However, it was inconsistent; before Part I was made she did not dance with the group.
The structure of the Part I was stable from Friday night to Saturday night, but there were minor variations in content. Ms. Cirio circled Álvarez in parallel runs on pointe on Friday. On Saturday that had been simplified to waltzing round her in balancés. There wasn’t much difference in effect, and both got her where she needed to be to lead the women in slow drifting claps across the stage.
The Défilé had an inscrutable, vaguely threatening quality, as when a car keeps following too closely. We heard stamps and claps before we could see and identify the source. More than once dancers surrounded Ms. Cirio and started heading towards her as the curtain closed once again.
A quartet of men, Dunn, Mr. Cirio, Durrett and Lawrence Rines Munro did the main dancing with Herfindahl, Álvarez, and Ms. Cirio. The last two women were the focal points of the work. Both women held up the weekend: Álvarez was in every section of “Artifact Suite,” Ms. Cirio was onstage more than anyone else in Part I, and was in a cast of “Approximate Sonata.” Their stamina was impressive.
Herfindahl didn’t do much solo; she and Ms. Cirio did a duet of bourrées and balancés while ten women danced in a V behind. In layout, it recalled the first movement of “Symphony in C.” The men switched off who did long solos.
As Ms. Cirio danced another solo, the rest of the cast laid down in darkness with their feet towards us, nearly invisible. Something very similar also happens in the “Chaconne,” and now the earlier iteration, instead of feeling as if it were making a connection, stole its thunder. This is the danger of making a “Star Wars” prequel that’s retrofitted; it’s much harder to make integral. A clapping sequence from Part III was also introduced early, but that wasn’t as singular a moment. Introducing it early felt as if it helped cement the work together.
After a dance with Ms. Cirio and the male quartet, the women and men crossed lines doing a new syncopated clap: another example of “Artifact Suite” now being its own work with its own material.
Each section of “Artifact Suite” is related to the others, but could be presented discretely. The leads in the first section appeared in other parts through the run, but except for the Mud Woman, not as a deliberate continuity. The hardest question to answer, even after seeing Part I twice: As a work that was prepended to “Artifact Suite” instead of presented independently, what did it do to the ballet? What did it do for it? Using what Nissinen said as a useful clue, Forsythe was still sorting in his mind the shape of Part I. There was a process and choices being made, but what was he aiming for? Until it settles into form we won’t know.
Forsythe didn’t end Part I with a statement. There was a large, contrapuntal section involving two different ports de bras, the curtain closed and the work went right into the “Chaconne.”
The “Chaconne” is likely the best known section of “Artifact;” it’s been spun off in “Artifact Suite,” but also in “Artifact II,” a small-scale adaptation that only uses the two main couples without the Mud Woman or a corps.
The leads in the “Chaconne” on Friday were Schwan and Patrick Yocum, as well as Ji Young Chae and Craig. On Saturday it was Kapitonova and Johns, as well as Chisako Oga and Dunn. There was so much to take in with the new section on first viewing that it took a second to focus more on the dancers.
Oga was a different dancer here than she was in Balanchine. She slammed into the movement, swung herself in Dunn’s arms, throwing her limbs round and up. There were no reservations and no attempts to be pretty-pretty.
Kapitonova was moved side to side by Johns, who held her in an attitude that looks as arched as a bass clef. She launched herself into Johns’ arms as he yanked her off the ground. She was heartfelt, fearless and committed, and looked great in the part, but there wasn’t a single dancer without a fire lit under them by “Artifact Suite.” Dancers don’t need to bring Forsythe’s lines to their classical performances, but there’s no reason they can’t bring that approach. “Allegro Brillante” asks for a different line, not a different commitment.
Forsythe added an intermission between the “Chaconne” and what is now just known as Part III. One small detail lost is the recording used between the two parts is omitted of the Bach played backwards, “which sounded like memory unwound.”
Part III is done to a recording by Margot Kazimirska of Eva Crossman-Hecht’s piano compositions. Both women were pianists for Ballett Frankfurt; Kazimirska often played Hecht’s work for performances of “Artifact.” Now both Parts II and III may become dependent on specific recordings. The “Chaconne” is not just to the Bach Chaconne, but to Nathan Milstein’s recording of it. Is it simply that Kazimirska’s recording is the only recording, or has her recording now been frozen as the music for Part III? Interesting how much Forsythe is willing to change his steps, but the scores seem more fixed.
The phrases in Part III are relentless, as much about drive as hitting positions. These performances were very punchy, Classical Aggression in the Manner of the Late 20th Century. That wasn’t the case in Part I. Is that a general tendency of restagings, even with the original choreographer? Because they don’t have the authority of the first cast, do they just say everything more forcefully?
One detail that looked worse in this staging was the entry of the dancers at the beginning of Part III. It was in demi-bras, and done as a reference to baroque dance. Now the arms are angled like the teapot arms in Part I. It was no longer a reference to baroque, but a parody of it. As it has before, the walk on relevé looked constipated as if the dancers had crapped their tights.
Once the thick of the dancing began, the music rose in chaotic scales: two male trios and a female quartet raced through one another. From there, a woman’s dance to an endlessly repeating phrase took the resources of the entire company, including the female principals. Chyrstyn Fentroy might have been in the second line, but she is so plastic in her facility your eye goes right to her.
Isaac Akiba and Lam led the first male quintet; Mr. Cirio led the second as if demonically possessed. A pas de deux for Madysen Felber and Roberts was done to fractured, incomplete phrases. The strange atmosphere and disconnection echoed “Five Pieces” in Balanchine’s “Episodes,” even to the molecular entropy of the music.
The women spun in before a low ominous rumble. Boom. They did a dance of swinging port de bras from the full “Artifact.” Like the other dances, it was very strongly punctuated. They crossed lines as the men came in to replace them, to do a double-clap phrase before the music fell apart from entropy.
Boom. Another rumble like a distant threat. The men lined up shoulder to shoulder as if doing Greek folk dance, but instead did sliding beats, and the music mounted to a massive, pounding, contrapuntal finale, where the the full cast responded to the Mud Woman’s ports de bras and claps. As the piano hammered out chords, their arms slashed round like whirling blades. It was like the construction of something awesome and awful: a space age Catherine Wheel. A clap and it was done. Blackout.
“Artifact Suite” isn’t easy to dance, and Forsythe making changes daily to the structure had to make it harder. At one point a man turned his back while walking in a line to tell the man behind him something. And playing Follow The Leader to copy the Mud Woman’s gestures caused a few horrified blank stares as dancers tried to keep up.
Forsythe’s propensity to change choreography in and for the moment isn’t remotely new. San Francisco danced “Artifact Suite,” only two years after Scottish Ballet gave its premiere:
Forsythe approaches the creation of a ballet as an evolutionary process, often revising his works for different companies or dancers. “Bill changes something according to where he is in his life,” says former Forsythe dancer Amy Raymond, who staged “Artifact Suite” for San Francisco Ballet in 2006, along with Jodie Gates. “The fantastic thing about working with him is that it’s often about whoever is in the room. He responds immediately to the creativity of the people in front of him.”
This isn’t just in staging, but in performance. Forsythe is fascinated by improvisation and “Artifact” has always relied on it. In the suite and the full-length the Mud Woman’s arm movements are chosen by her from a defined group of possibilities. In the full-length version, the script of the two speaking roles varies with similar parameters from performance to performance.
This also links his ballets closely to his participation, even with trusted stagers such as Gelber. It made the rounds years ago that Forsythe didn’t want his work performed after his death. Whether or not he still or ever did hold this belief, it makes more sense given how dependent they are on his participation.
There also seems to be two tiers of works: Ballets that are relatively fixed and those that are more dynamic – the more a ballet gets staged, the more fixed it becomes out of necessity.
There’s nothing surprising about any of this, for all his intellectualizing, Forsythe is simply going back to an older, more physical approach to the essence of dance: movement in the moment. The idea of choreography, and of choreography as a transmittable text, is a much younger one.
The headaches lie not for Forsythe or the dancers, but for stagers, scholars and anyone interested in history, preservation or meaning in choreography. It’s misguided to treat or interpret Forsythe’s dances as you would a text. They aren’t – they’re more like a base lump of clay he can return to and put a different nose or ears on depending on the situation.
While Balanchine’s ballets have a relatively stable text, particularly with the establishment of trusts and foundations dedicated to the works, talking about the meaning of Forsythe’s works, is closer in futility to trying to interpret Merce Cunningham’s dances. Say all you want about them, because tomorrow the detail you seized upon may not be there. Balanchine may have disdained interpretation, but the targets didn’t constantly move.
For Forsythe right now, he’s continually fussing with his dances, going at them and changing in the moment. From the seats, the changes can amount to little. When “Pas/Parts” was restaged for San Francisco Ballet in 2016, Forsythe mentioned that he had changed most of the steps. I didn’t find and read my notes from 1999 until after I had seen and made notes in 2016. My impressions of both versions were essentially the same. The work, the process and the especially the changes aren’t for the audience, but for the dancers and for him. Being in the moment is his fountain of youth.
copyright © 2022 by Leigh Witchel
“Approximate Sonata,” “Artifact Suite” – Boston Ballet
Citizens Bank Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts
November 4-5, 2022
Cover: Boston Ballet in Part I (Défilé) of “Artifact Suite.” Photo credit © Rosalie O’Connor.
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