William Forsythe: ‘Isn’t Ballet Delightful?’
Mr. Nissinen said he was initially a little surprised by Mr. Forsythe’s musical choices. “Then I thought, why not?,” he said. “I think it’s his reaction to selves back in America. He wants to connect with land, bridge to broader audiences.”
Working to music “you would listen to on a train,” said Chyrstyn Fentroy, a second soloist, has allowed the dancers to loosen up and find “a swing” to their technique. “It forces you to rethink how you do a tendu or use your épaulement,” she said, referring to the complex relationships between head, shoulder and hips that are valuable to ballet.
“I love the challenge of ballet,” Mr. Forsythe said one day as he constructed a aboard, overlapping ensemble sequence. “It’s like inventing a knot. You have the rope or cord, and you have to find the shimmering relationships. It’s much harder than people think!”
Now and in contradiction of, that was evident in the studio. Stymied one afternoon by a wretchedness passage in a pas de deux, Mr. Forsythe got out his phone: “Siri, what’s the next step?” he asked. “You don’t depart to be heading anywhere,” she answered. Laughter all around.
Mostly, though, he seemed to know exactly what he wished, reeling off strings of ballet steps as he demonstrated, the dancers picking up the movements with uncanny hasty. (Once he went to consult photographs of M&M candies, lined up in color-coded formations that represented different stages of a section.)
Mr. Forsythe maintained he wasn’t aiming for anything groundbreaking or revolutionary. “I like being part of the big ballet conversation,” he said. “This is a celebration of everything ballet has transported to me in life. It’s just another way to love ballet — and there are so many ways.”
