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The Guardian
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
English National Ballet: The Forsythe Programme review
It's no coincidence that so many of a new generation of choreographers have danced for William Forsythe, the most influential dance-maker since George Balanchine. It's not just that he encourages thought and creativity, enabling people such as Crystal Pite, Emily Molnar and Jill Johnson to emerge as significant forces in their own right. It's also that he makes dancers look so powerful, majestic, in control of time and space and their own destinies. English National Ballet's The Forsythe Programme, which has been filling Sadler's Wells with adoring audiences this past week, is a case in point. In three contrasting works, the sense of dance prowess realised springs from the questing character of Forsythe himself. Never a man to rest on his laurels, in his mid-70s he's still refining and rethinking dance. He seems constantly to ask himself what something is, turning it like a diamond to see how the facets will refract the light. Rearray (London Edition 2025), originally made as a duet in 2011 for Sylvie Guillem and Nicolas Le Riche, has been refashioned as a trio, with one central ballerina (now on pointe) and two male consorts. In a series of short scenes separated by sudden blackouts, sometimes to David Morrow's dark-hued score, sometimes in silence, the dancers shape the air in fiercely defined symmetries. In her central role, Sangeun Lee's long legs flick into casual attitudes, her arms outstretched into impossible geometry. Halfway through a movement, she seems to hesitate, question where to go next. In the dark, positions shift, often surprisingly. The men (Henry Dowden, Rentaro Nakaaki) are watchful, in her thrall. They fling off sprightly jumps, super-fast turns; sit on stage, arms interlinked like medieval jesters. The piece is full of quotations from works of the past, struck almost casually before the dancers move on. In the next cast, Emily Suzuki brings a gentler flow to the dynamics of the movement, less haughty than Lee but still very much a queen to the attendant men (Jose María Lorca Menchón and Miguel Angel Maidana). The pensive mood is in marked contrast to the muscular vitality of Herman Schmerman (Quintet), for two men and three women to music by Thom Willems, reconceived with a bright blue background (lighting design Tanja Rühl) and orange plush velvet leotards. Created for New York City Ballet in 1992, its title taken from Steve Martin's noir parody Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, it's an abstract piece of circus vitality that sets its participants off in cheekily insouciant showoff turns. The energy is electric as, on opening night, Aitor Arrieta, Alice Bellini, Ivana Bueno, Francesco Gabriele Frola and Swanice Luong stroll on to fling themselves into off-kilter pirouettes and eye-popping entrechats, feet and limbs moving at pace. At the end, they all fall down – a tribute to the final moment of Balanchine's Serenade, perhaps, but also a reflection of just how exhausting the combinations they throw off are. The delicious contrast between the formality of the patterns created and the relaxed bravura of the dancers is amped to the max in the final work, Playlist (EP) from 2022, in which dazzling feats of balletic virtuosity are set to a score by artists including Peven Everett, Lion Babe and Barry White. It begins with ENB's impressive cohort of men performing athletic (and often rarely used) ballet combinations like battling club dancers, raising the roof with the sheer elevation of their jumps and the sharpness of their turns. Then the women enter like a brilliant chorus line. The intricate shifts of their movements, alone and in constantly changing configurations, release a sense of infectious pleasure. Yet amid the delirium there's subtlety too: a duet for Junor Souza and Precious Adams to Natalie Cole's This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) is full of feeling as well as panache. The entire evening feels like an assertion of ballet's ability to wrap its past and future into one joyful package. Forsythe's works are a jewel in ENB's crown, and the company makes them gleam. The Forsythe Programme is at Sadler's Wells, London, until 19 April
Telegraph
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Forsythe Programme: Guaranteed to leave you with a great, giddy grin on your face
It was a snuffly, sleep-deprived critic who took his seat on Thursday evening, sensing that even staying awake for the evening's 85 minutes of entertainment would be a triumph. By the time it ended – some 15 minutes late, but hey-ho – I felt ready to spring up and run a marathon. A tribute to the great New York-born postmodern choreographer William Forsythe, English National Ballet's The Forsythe Programme comes in three zesty, entirely abstract, prop- and set-free parts. There's one borderline novelty – Rearray (London Edition 2025) – as well as Herman Schmerman (1992), a piece not seen in this country since the Royal Ballet last performed it almost 30 years ago. But it is the returning work, Playlist (EP) – beefed up for ENB in 2022 from two slightly earlier iterations – that will pull the crowds during this 10-day season. And it was this that proved so genuinely, ridiculously revivifying on the first night. If you were to imagine a Venn diagram with the structures and strictures of a Balanchine work in one circle and an exultant club night in the other, Playlist (EP) would sit perfectly in the middle. Forsythe reasons that pop music is pretty traditional in terms of its composition, and that its core rhythms have plenty in common with the music of the great Russian ballet composers (Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Prokofiev), but that 'pop is just more blatant in its desire to engender joyful physical expression'. And so, the piece plays out to six beat-driven tracks – from the neo-disco of Peven Everett's Surely Shorty, via the groovy soul of Sha La La Means I Love You by Barry 'Walrus of Love' White to Natalie Cole's exultant This Will Be an Everlasting Love. And my, does Forsythe whip up some joy. You can marvel at his organic, apparently effortless fusion and alternation of retooled ballet vocabulary and shuffling dance-floor moves, at his marvellous marshalling of a stage-full of dancers, the subtle variations in his responses to each songs, and his ever-ingenious way of wrapping each section. (Forsythe has a positively McCartney-like mastery of codas and conclusions.) On which subject, feel free, too, to beam in pure delight at the climactic reveal, which implies that a couple (here, the fabulously musical duo of Precious Adams and Junor Souza) have been shimmying away together, backstage and unseen, all the while. Or, as I suspect most people do, you can simply let its 30-odd-minutes tumble blissfully over you, grateful for the mixture of effervescence and (in the main) rigour that ENB's luminously clad dancers bring to the whole thing. As for the two hors d'oeuvres, Rearray – bulked up from a duo that Forsythe created in 2011 for the Sylvie Guilllem and Nicolas Le Riche, and here performed by the crack trio of Sangeun Lee, Henry Dowden and Rebtaro Nakaaki – is a spikier three-way 'conversation' that's at its best when the dancers are apparently trying (and barely managing) to cajole each other into various flavours of imitative, often line-fracturing movement. Created for New York City Ballet, the quintet from Herman Schmerman (its title taken from a line in the 1982 Steve Martin comedy Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) is more playful, and was more groundbreaking back in the day in the apparent casualness with which the dancers stride around between sections. Even if their scores feel a bit wilfully spartan now, both hold the attention. But, as Hamlet famously said, the Playlist's the thing. And this, above all, is the piece guaranteed to leave you with a great, giddy grin on your face.
The Independent
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
English National Ballet celebrate William Forsythe in sharp new highlight show
From the edgy snapshots of Rearray (London Edition 2025) to the joyful club energy of Playlist (EP), English National Ballet are lucid and sharp in this celebration of William Forsythe. It's part of the company's ongoing relationship with one of the world's most influential choreographers – a jewel in ENB's crown, and one that it's keeping diamond-bright. Those brackets in the titles underline the way Forsythe likes to revise his works: adding, tweaking, reframing for different casts and different circumstances. Rearray started out in 2011 as a duet for French stars Sylvie Guillem and Nicolas Le Riche. Forsythe then reworked it as a trio, and has reshaped it again for ENB. It's a ballet in blackouts. Sangeun Lee, Henry Dowden and Rentaro Nakaaki stroll in and out of steps, trying out classical moves, turning them inside and out. Then the lights snap out. Sometimes they come back on to a drastically different tableau; sometimes a dancer is still finishing off the last move of the previous scene. David Morrow's electronic score stops and starts too, just not in sync with the lights. Lee is elegant and slightly aloof, always in control of the situation. The two men can get goofier, a contrast to her poise. Though she's the cool one, they get a wider range of material, making tight patterns with linked arms and semaphoring hands. All three make the most of Forsythe's highly articulate steps: the way he emphasises the depth and contrast of a movement. Herman Schmerman (Quintet), from 1992, is a speedy showcase for five dancers, set to the thwacks and chimes of Thom Willems' score. It's a deliberate mix of the virtuoso and the casual. A dancer will take a pose, then thrust a hip to pull it off balance. Just as they're in full flight, another dancer will wander past, then suddenly explode into jumps. Aitor Arrieta, Alice Bellini, Ivana Bueno, Francesco Gabriele Frola and Swanice Luong bring plenty of attack to the driving moves. Playlist (EP) is a giddy delight, and a belter of a finale. It starts from the joyful recognition that, since virtuoso ballet steps are often danced to a steady beat, they'll work to a soundtrack of club classics. The first version, created in 2018, was a bravura showcase for ENB's men. It's so much fun that Forsythe expanded it, adding dances for women and songs by Barry White and Natalie Cole. Precious Adams and Junor Souza are particularly dazzling in their fleet-footed duet. The whole company has a fabulous time – and so does the audience. 'The Forsythe Programme' is at Sadlers Wells until 19 April
