by Leigh Witchel
Are you old enough to remember when William Forsythe was the flavor of the decade? A quarter of a century later, here he is again, still tasty. “Physical Thinking” was The National Ballet of Canada’s contribution to the bumper crop of Forsythe programs this season with a triple bill of works originally made between 1991 and 1996.
“The Second Detail” was created for The National in 1991, towards the end of the first Age of Forsythe, when he seemed to be commissioned to make a work at every ballet company. This was Canada’s dance.
The ballet has the signs of the Age of Forsythe: Thom Willems’ score of electronics and percussion is a sonic marker. There are also visual markers; Forsythe used a line of gray folding chairs across the back, recalling the line of corps dancers in the second section of “Artifact.” The choreographic markers include the extremes of speed and balance, sometimes hazardous. Nan Wang exited the stage with difficulty early in the performance and did not return. Felix Paquet took his place and the performance completed without interruption [per the company Wang is recovering and doing fine].
The fluid interchange between groups and solos or duets, is also a mark of Forsythe, as in “In The Middle, Somewhat Elevated” or “Behind The China Dogs.” Siphesihle November revolved through tours to pirouettes spinning to the ground, then everyone else took up the turn with two women left standing. One was Greta Hodgkinson, who is going on 30 years with the company, 23 as a principal. Yes, she looked older, but no less fit in the work, stepping into a turned-in position on pointe, another motif echoed by everyone.
The women assembled in two lines with their legs pumped, and Skylar Campbell pushed the women’s legs to revolve them, and then danced a solo as the others played backup. Tanya Howard entered for a final, wildly thrashing dance in a white dress by Issey Miyake. In the original staging, that gown was hung in the back as scenery. Howard moved through the others, and raced round the perimeter. Heading to the center, the others jumped across in lines, and she collapsed. The moment echoed both The Chosen One in “The Rite of Spring” and, oddly enough, the final punchline in Robbins’ “The Concert.” Campbell came forward, kicked over a sign at the front that said only “THE” – and the ballet ended.
For those far outside the temple, those hallmarks of the Age of Forsythe were a shtick. If you don’t get it, “The Second Detail” is yet another Attack Ballet: walk or run to place, strike a pose, push your pelvis, slam. But Forsythe didn’t make crap. What made those First Age of Forsythe ballets so exciting, even nearly three decades later, was the dance energy – the Physical Thinking. Forsythe was a master of using tight, layered composition to whip up structural pressure on the stage into a barnburner of a dance.
“Approximate Sonata 2016” was another of Forsythe’s Tralfamadorian works that lived in several times at once. It wasn’t a guest commission, it was home-grown. First done in 1996 by Ballett Frankfurt with “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” the pair formed a cheeky diptych: “Two Ballets in the Manner of the Late Twentieth Century.” But as Tanztheater Billy became Ballet Billy again (That was the second Age of Forsythe. We’re in the third) he revisited this work, along with several others. This 2016 version was staged for Paris Opera Ballet.
As with “The Second Detail,” there’s a controlling word: YES, projected in pale letters on the backdrop. Willems’ score here started as a low pulse, the scrim rising and falling slowly in the back both as décor and a marker of time. In duets for four couples, the five pas de deux (the first couple returned for a brief coda) focused on torsion and the extremities of partnering.
The women wore severe dance outfits: black leotards and bare legs, while the men danced more freely and wore something that reflected it: electric blue pants and a fuchsia tank top. Spencer Hack shadowed Sonia Rodriguez in between bouts of tight leg beats. He slapped his thighs, leading his movement with a hand that curled and swooped. Rodriguez gently pressed Hack, then touched his upraised hand experimentally. It plummeted to the floor. She pushed him, again without force before she walked off; his solo afterwards formed the transition to Hannah Fischer and Christopher Gerty.
Fischer is the daughter of Mandy-Jayne Richardson and Lindsay Fischer, both former dancers with New York City Ballet and now ballet masters for The National. Fischer is tall like her father, and stork-like with long, angular limbs. Her dance with Gerty involved more partnering than Rodriguez and Hack. Gerty took the lead, lifting and supporting Fischer off-balance. He moved away from her in tight spins, but only to return.
The other three women entered, then the men, for a dance that had distant echoes of the double pas de quatre that bookends “Agon.” Willems’ score chugged slowly as the men and women paired off, leaving Svetlana Lunkina and Paquet. Their duet was about deterioration: she held balances and penchées, falling slowly out of them like a soufflé collapsing. At the end she stood in tendu front; he touched her down her back and she moved off holding that pose while he careened through a solo.
Breaking up the symmetry, Tanya Howard entered wearing neon green pants for a duet with Kota Sato that involved more hand-to-hand work. Rodriguez and Hack returned and the ballet turned into a rehearsal, almost as if it were a dream sequence. Rodriguez moved away from Hack in step-over turns, a motif through the work, and returned to him, but to talk to Hack, too quietly for us to make out. From her body language, we could see her explaining something about the step. He stood and watched her as she showed him further choreography while the curtain descended. Perhaps Forsythe’s point was that all relationships, on and offstage, are process and communication.
Of the ballets in this triple bill, “Vertiginous” has been done the most. It’s the shortest, and the easiest to produce (though not to dance). Twenty three years ago, “Vertiginous” could look overstuffed, now, at least in Canada as staged by Kathryn Bennetts, it looked classical. That’s not a new development; rather a parallel one. When San Francisco Ballet danced “Vertiginous” in the 90’s, it looked manic. But even the minimal décor was ironic; the cyclorama was a sky blue backdrop with the words [sky blue backdrop] projected on it. When Paris danced it, that was dispensed with, and the dancers, with their extravagant technique, tamed the ballet.
Canada’s production stuck with a plain black cyc, and danced closer to Paris as well. But also in 2019, the ballet is now familiar – both to the dancers and to us. The final movement of Schubert’s Ninth symphony was often heard on a recorded version; here, the company’s orchestra, led by David Briskin, played it live.
As the ballet opened, Harrison James and Naoya Ebe stood in the most classical of positions: tendu front, but pushing the line forward past the classical axis – really bending. If we think of Forsythe as descended from Balanchine, there are lines to Ashton as well.
Calley Skalnik didn’t rush the fast opening turns and piques; jumping and skidding to the next pose, but fully in control. Chelsey Meiss, all limbs and flaming red hair, snapped into second position with a wide échappé. Hannah Galway went in for Jillian Vanstone, and pushed back off her leg in a balance as if it were “Agon” – another line drawn to antecedents from all over. All over – James came forward and popped his hip as if he were dancing Fosse.
What once looked at times like a parody of classical ballet has now gone mainstream – not just the Paris dancers can produce a vertiginous thrill of exactitude. In 2019 Toronto’s dancers looked unfazed. Maybe we should read Forsythe’s intentions from the last pose of the ballet without any spin: the dancers lined up and closed to an airtight fifth position.
One of the themes of the season seems to have been the summation of previous generations, from the Cunningham Centennial to Twyla Tharp’s fêting at American Ballet Theatre and Forsythe walking back into the spotlight in ballet as if he had never left it. Tharp just turned 77, Forsythe will be 70 at the end of the year. These rebels are now our senior artists, and their rebellion – and what came after it – has now been incorporated into the mainstream of our art. Not only did they change over time, so did we.
copyright © 2019 by Leigh Witchel
“The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,” “Approximate Sonata 2016,” “The Second Detail” – The National Ballet of Canada
Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, ON
June 1, 2019
Cover: Naoya Ebe and Harrison James in “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude.” Photo © Karolina Kuras.
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