by Leigh Witchel
William Forsythe’s “A Quiet Evening of Dance” began with an order, disguised as an agreement. His project was one of the first to inaugurate The Griffin Theater, a new theater in The Shed, an arts complex that is part of Hudson Yards. It’s a black box house several escalator flights up in the building – as a friend said, it felt like a cinema. The theater has decent seats and good sightlines, though it still needs to work on traffic control, particularly letting people out at the end of a show. It’s also a size the city needs: 500 seats, slightly larger than The Joyce.
Forsythe himself came out to give the curtain speech. He’s never at his best speaking in public, this was no exception. He gave a patronizing chat on how to switch our phones to airplane mode, with the concluding observation that it was so nice in these times that we can all agree on something. Make what you will of his conflation of compliance with agreement.
The show was in two parts, and the core cast of seven dancers had been bulked up by four dancers added; casting was shuffled very late in the game. The first half was four works, done with either the shortest of pauses or no pause, as if they were a single idea. They were indeed quiet: most sections were done to recorded ambient noise, some sections to recorded piano. The second half of the show was to Rameau.
“Prologue” was a duet for Paravaneh Scharafali and Ander Zabala to muffled bird noises and the dancers’ breathing. Both dancers came out in elbow length stretch gloves, used throughout the show as a budget costume change. As well as terre à terre movement – pose, walk, pose – Forsythe returned to a subject he’s visited often, the male-female duet. Zabala placed his foot between Scharafali’s legs, or his hand above her arm. They clasped hands and postured like a ballroom couple. The restless, fussy interactions were like an attempt to put together a jigsaw puzzle: wiggling pieces trying to see if there was a fit.
After a final pose, the first pair was replaced by Jill Johnson and Brit Rodemund in “Catalogue.” Both wore plain gray, and each began by lightly touching the tips of their own fingers together as they moved their hands from corner to corner of their torsos. Another kind of puzzle, this time Sudoku, looking for the proper space. The dance continued arm to arm, position to position until the poses morphed into a baroque bras bas. It felt almost like a tall how-the-earth-began tale about ballet. Johnson and Rodemund went back to sharp-elbowed posing, eyeing one another for cues. Yet with each pose they looked as surprised as babies finding their thumbs.
After a sharp clap, the work developed to extended tendus and bourrées on half toe. They framed their faces with their hands as if they were vogueing in slow motion and ended this dance of gesture by pressing their hands palm to palm.
“Epilogue” was actually in the middle (somewhat elevated?) A recording of Morton Feldman’s kitten-on-the-keyboard “Nature Pieces from Piano No. 1” was the soundtrack. Zabala entered to do still-fidgety movement, but leggier: turn in and out. Sharafali entered, now wearing purple instead of white gloves, and as the music continued, she continued the idea.
The dance to this point was largely classical ballet in socks, as punctuated and influenced by Forsythe’s theories of improvisation. Rauf “Rubber Legz” Yasit entered wearing orange gloves. His movement style, that he developed from b-boying, was very different. Mostly it fit with minimal seams, but Yasit crouched below the others enough and did enough floor work that sometimes brought up the wrong associations – a servile Caliban figure.
Johnson returned in white gloves and red shoes, doing more complex steps including gargouillades. Ayman Harper, wearing purple gloves, replaced her and extended the examination: turn in, turn out, swivel. Forsythe’s deployment of vocabulary always has a clinical, experimental air, but the product – a heaping pile of finicky ballet steps – wasn’t all that experimental.
Roderick George took up the thread, sliding and lunging, and went on to quote Beyoncé’s strut in the “Single Ladies” video and a more recent dance craze, flossing. George had a ferocious attack, but there still was that lingering question, why was the scruffy Kurdish guy the one rolling on the floor and the black guy doing Beyoncé? That’s reading a lot that wasn’t necessarily there. It could be as easy as it was something they did well, but it still lingered.
On the other hand, Jake Tribus in a green shirt and pink socks, strutted out and served a runway walk and vogued to end his section – is that using a stereotype or celebrating it? Scharafali and Yasit danced separately, then he touched her hand and elbow, began partnering her, and for a brief interlude the disciplines bumped together before the work ended.
“Dialogue (DUO2015)” brought back “Duo2015,” which was also seen here in Sylvie Guillem’s farewell tour. Wearing tank tops, Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts, moved their hands to ambient noises, over and under in front of themselves. Their relationship had a goofy side: Laurel and Hardy or Vladimir and Estragon. Again, the bouncy walks they did had the feeling of experimentation or improvisation: as if Forsythe was showing us his sketchbook. They moved backwards, took a pose and the stage went dark.
The problem with the evening to that point was that ambient noise, maybe even quiet, wasn’t Forsythe’s ally. The movement phrases were limp and meandering, because there was little to rein Forsythe in: the steps still looked like whatever people’s bodies puked up.
In “Seventeen/Twenty One,” Rameau wasn’t really Forsythe’s ally either. For all his lovely music, Rameau is slippery: he made pleasant musique de table by the yard and tempts verbose choreographers to ramble.
A white dance floor was now laid in place of the black one, and a male trio entered. They all seemed enchanted with the arm flourishes they were making, as if those actually meant something more than embellishment. The port de bras the men made didn’t come from deep in the back, where you could argue that it had substance. It was brought up like a twig – and treated like currency.
As with the first half, the work was brief discrete episodes. Johnson came on and danced with Harper, whose elbows stayed tight to his body for an almost comic effect. They ended fingertip to fingertip. Watts and Sharafali had a brief idyll that wrapped round to finish.
The next section added some context: George and Yasit began in back crouched to start, then came to center to dance a slow adagio rolling on the floor. It was breakdancing slowed to Rameau’s adagio tempo. Zabala and Watts danced another duo, where Zabala was living the dream, exaggerating everything as if the position mattered more than the phrase.
After a few more sections Forsythe looped back with a finale that referenced the first trio, and had the swinging tendus Forythe used as a building block in “Artifact.” It was punctuated by Yasit crossing the stage like Elie Chaib in Paul Taylor’s “Arden Court” and leaving. Everyone returned and “Seventeen / Twenty One” finished – after going on way too long – by coming forward and bowing.
The compilation form and small scale of the evening felt closest to Forsythe’s “New Suite.” But Forsythe’s short works are rarely his best. They’ve got all his pretension, but none of the mass or volume of “Artifact” or “Impressing the Czar” that made them deliver. He seems to need an opera house behind him to help him springboard from theorizing to brilliance.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“Prologue,” “Catalogue,” “Epilogue,” “Dialogue (DUO2015),” “Seventeen/Twenty One” – William Forsythe: A Quiet Evening of Dance
The Griffin Theater, Manhattan, NY
October 12, 2019
Cover: Jill Johnson and Brit Rodemund in “Catalogue.” Photo © Mohamed Sadek.
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