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Flash Review 2, 7-24:
Celebrity Dance Match, II: Balanchine vs. Forsythe
Paris Opera Ballet Places Them Mano e Mano
By Tara Zahra
Copyright 2000 Tara Zahra
VIENNA -- I have seen
plenty of Balanchine in my time, and quite a bit of William Forsythe.
But through the juxtaposition of the two at the Vienna State Opera
House Saturday, brilliantly executed by the Paris Opera Ballet,
I learned a few things about both. Balanchine and Forsythe exposed
each other, through a conversation full of rebellions and homages
and calm replies. And yet it could not be considered an argument,
because in the end the range of works presented affirmed the fungible
potential of classical technique -- to express the spirit of a time,
to be used as the language for an argument or an agreement, to swing
from high culture to low, even when the choreography is ostensibly
only "about" choreography, music, and technique itself.
I'm not sure what I could
possibly say about "Concerto Barocco" that hasn't been said before,
but for me what stood out, and became most relevant as the night
went on, was its sunny brilliance, its insistence that the world
is beautiful and that dancers hopping on pointe for seemingly endless
amounts of time do so breezily and happily. Balanchine's affirmation
of the beauty of simple lines and steps, executed perfectly, keeps
us transfixed from start to finish. Even in the first moment, the
simple presentation of orderly rows of dancers standing perfectly
still in their leotards was enough to take my breath away. In the
second movement it was the extensions, folding and unfolding with
just the right amount of softness at the end of a sharp line, the
pendulum lift, in which the ballerina's legs scissor back and forth
as she is carried across the stage and then deposited into a deep
penche. And in the third movement, I could only be amazed that a
simple sequence of piques and fondues could be so exciting.
The dancers were perfect,
particularly corps member Nathalie Aubin, who as a soloist managed
to break through the rule of form to communicate with the other
dancers on stage -- just the right mixture of playfulness and explosiveness
without trying too hard. But I should say that in all honesty my
first impression of "Concerto Barocco" was that it could be danced
by children -- that it belongs to the choreographer and above all
to Bach, and not to the dancers, who merely needed to appear on
stage with perfect technique and perfect bodies to execute the vision.
Forsythe proved me wrong,
by showing, an hour later, in "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude,"
how thin the line is between Balanchine's visions of perfection
and beauty and a technical bravura that is tastelessly loud and
garish -- how much skill it takes to dance innocence in white without
becoming a parody of yourself. Forsythe's "Vertiginous Thrill" is
not itself quite a parody, but rather a deliberately staged playful
adolescence, a demonstration of what happens when dancers rebel
and assert themselves too boldly in a world governed by primary
colors and simplicity and patterns. The male dancers wear bright
purple velvet tunics without backs, the women ridiculously stiff
lime green tutus, mimicking GB's blinding light, but coloring in
its purity. Suddenly even the echappes seem too big, wrists flap
all over the place, those hops don't look at all painless, piques
and fondues disturb rather than calm, the whole thing seems frantic.
But the piece's success above all rested on the execution by dancers
Clairemarie Osta, Emilie Cozette, Ghyslaine Reichert, Herve Courtain,
and Stephane Phavorin. They exercised just enough control, and danced
with just enough understatement and subtlety, that I was not quite
sure if the audience got the joke -- which might have been on them
in the end. Granted, it was an audience particularly heavy on clingy
couples, American tourists, and Viennese society folk wearing all
of their jewels. And maybe I am not giving them enough credit. But
the polite applause for moments of particularly overstated and almost
comical gymnastics suggested that the whole thing slipped over at
least a few heads.
The second Forsythe piece,
"Woundwork 1," performed immediately after "Concerto Barocco," also
engaged with Balanchine's insistence on the ballerina's perfection
and beauty. The music was ugly, the stage was dark, we seemed suddenly
to have been transported to a Tunnel World underground "Concerto
Barocco." All the more so because the technical elements were once
again so familiar -- dancers (at least at the outset) still moving
through pose to pose, hyperextending elbows and knees along the
way, coming home to perfect 5th positions. But increasingly the
pattern making was disrupted by intentional ugliness -- knees turned
in, bodies tangled, lines unclean. At times though, these distortions
only proved Balanchine's point, and I am not sure they were meant
to do otherwise. A perfect developpe aborted halfway is still beautiful
for its potential, all the more beautiful because you can see that
the dancers' technique is flawless even in moments of transition,
when it is most easy to cheat or give in to sloppiness and exhaustion.
And in the end I felt a little tired of the cacophony, immune to
the dysfunction, ready to go back to Balanchine's blissful world.
The "Rubies" section
of "Jewels" (titled here Capriccio) was the final piece of the evening,
and was an excellently chosen reply to Forsythe's commentary. For
if Forsythe insists on the ability of ballet to slip into the realm
of the gaudy and dysfunctional, "Rubies" seems to argue that even
when you dress ballerinas like Vegas stars and give them Broadway
steps, they belong to an elegant world in spite of themselves. By
incorporating aspects of "low" culture into his own choreography,
Balanchine thus ironically reaffirms the divide between high and
low. "Rubies" is certainly playful, even fun. But its carefully
controlled transgressions against norms of modesty and taste merely
remind us that a ballerina cannot really be frivolous, inviting
us to poke fun at the frivolity of the chorus line. And Saturday
I saw a true ballerina -- Aurelie Dupont, whose energy and technical
brilliance could not in the least be cheapened by the glitz of rubies.
I am not sure I have ever seen a dancer turn faster or with more
self-assurance than Dupont, who was full of surprises in an evening
when technical brilliance was the norm -- one double (or maybe triple)
turn in developpe second still stands out in my mind.
In the end, the conversation
between Forsythe and Balanchine was provocative, enlightening, and
certainly visually exciting, but I wondered where we go from here.
Must we have this conversation over whether ballet belongs to "high"
or "low" culture, whether it is only about beauty or can be about
ugly things too? I think Forsythe's spirit will probably triumph,
while taking nothing from Balanchine's brilliance. But after adolescence,
what next? What will ballet do next with its freedom to disturb
us?
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