A Danced Rituel
When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
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William Forsythe’s new program for La Scala provides an opportunity to reflect on the direction taken by “contemporary ballet” over several decades. The American choreographer made a name for himself in the 1980s with titles such as “Steptext,” “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” “Herman Schmermann,” “The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude”—each of them able to excite not only fans of contemporary dance but also lovers of classical ballet because Forsythe founded a new idiom based on the grammar of the danse d’école. In Italy we call this style “post-classical:” a definition that insists on the classical balance while in search of other axes in the kinetics of torso and limbs, risky, unstable and for this very reason so contemporary. An aesthetic and functional element helps to recognize this language: the pointe shoes worn by the female dancers, no longer instruments of romantic elevation, nor of imperial virtuosity or composed neoclassicism, but pivots of lightning and almost aggressive dynamics. While his language spread, Forsythe trod along parallel paths, including in his own artistic cosmogony contemporary dances finely décontractés or objects d’art installed in museum spaces.
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When Frank Gehry was tapped to be the architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, he envisioned the space to be “a living room for the city.”
Continue ReadingSan Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House is a grand, gracious theater, so it was a big deal to see the San Francisco Ballet School hold its end-of-year performances in that hall for the first time since at least 1985.
Continue ReadingAt its heart, “Sylvia” is a ballet about the resistance to love—a theme that continues to resonate deeply, as the human spirit often recoils from love, driven by fear, pride, a need for control, or the weight of duties and moral constraints.
Continue ReadingSince the 1970s, the Paris Opera Ballet has cultivated a distinctive tradition of nurturing its own dancers as emerging choreographers.
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