Dance
Royal Ballet (Covent Garden)
The higher brutalism
Deirdre McMahon
Like John Neumeier, William Forsythe is an American choreographer whose repu- tation has been made in Europe. Both had their first breaks with the Stuttgart Ballet and they now direct two major German houses, Neumeier in Hamburg and Forsythe in Frankfurt. Apart from his early work with the Stuttgart, very little of Forsythe's work has been seen in England, although there has been the occasional television broadcast, notably Love Songs and a pas de deux from In the middle, some- what elevated performed by Sylvie Guillem and Laurent Hilaire for the annual South Bank review in 1988. It is this work which the Royal Ballet, anxious for some time to acquire a Forsythe work, has chosen for its repertory.
Forsythe has polarised critical opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. Admirers hail him as the new Balanchine who has extend- ed the boundaries of contemporary classi- cism. Indeed, there were strong rumours that after New York City Ballet's American Music Festival in 1988, for which he creat- ed Behind the China Dogs, NYCB's director Peter Martins invited him to join the com- pany. Martins's admiration for Forsythe's work does not surprise me because they share a view of women in their choreogra- phy which I particularly loathe.
After watching two performances of In the middle, somewhat elevated, the memo- ries which stick in my mind (they don't linger, they stick) is of women with limbs like scissors, callipers and compasses, jab- bing, pointing and stabbing. Their pelvises gyrate, their hands claw, their arms hook, their spines are like steel, their points dig into the stage like pneumatic drills. They are like cold, voracious Furies. The men don't fare much better and Forsythe's corps are little more than ciphers. Watch- ing all this is like being jabbed with red-hot needles, an effect I am sure Forsythe would love. The bodies are in such a whirl of fre- netic activity that I don't wonder at the comment of one American critic that his ballets should be controlled substances. At one level it is puerile SM fantasy, at anoth- er it is dance as caricature and distortion.
Balanchine's Agon has obviously influ- enced Forsythe's style and in 1957 Agon was accused of caricaturing and distorting classical style as it was then understood. I don't think it did anything of the kind but I have heard Forsythe's fans use this argu- ment. In Agon Balanchine created dances full of sexiness and wit and was stimulated and challenged at every point by Stravin- sky's score. For Forsythe, distortion and caricature are ends in themselves while Thom Willem's electronic score simply bludgeons the listener.
It comes as no surprise that deconstruc- tion and its gurus, Foucault and Derrida, have had a major influence on Forsythe because they have had the same brutalising effect on the French language as Forsythe has on classical dance. Deconstruction is the perfect refuge for a pseudo-intellectual like Forsythe. It disguises his cynicism and indifference towards the dancers and the audience under the pretence of clinical analysis. In a 1983 work called Square Deal for the Jeffrey Ballet, Forsythe had his dancers come on uttering such gnomic statements as, 'It's a blend of the new real- ism and the old artifice'. This is no doubt how Forsythe sees his work, and his fans have followed suit. I listened to the twitter- ings of Natalie Wheen on Radio Four's Kaleidoscope: 'They're hearing things they never dreamed of . . . This is the Royal Ballet energised'. The two Ashton ballets on the same bill were described variously as flabby and soporific. Of course, this is really Forsythe's secret: he appeals to the kind of people who tell you that although they don't like ballet, they really like William Forsythe.
Ashton's Monotones has not been revived for some years, not surprisingly since it demands six classical stylists of the purest water who must be individual dancers in their own right and yet blend harmoniously in the two contrasting trios. In 'Trois Gnossiennes' only Fiona Chadwick was able to meet the challenge of the choreog- raphy, which looks simple but demands tremendous control. 'Trois Gymnopedies' was better but not much. Monotones is a landmark work in the Royal's repertory but it is a landmark of the past.
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