William Forsythe by Staatsballett Berlin
What I most enjoy about Forsythe‘s work is the androgyny of the choreographies: often, male and female dancers make very similar movements, equally fierce and fluid, breaking some gendered conventions the perception of dance.
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🎭 Approximate Sonata 2016 / One Flat Thing, reproduced / Blake Works I
🩰 Staatsballett Berlin
🕺 William Forsythe
🏛️ Deutsche Oper Berlin
🗓️ 31.01.2025
I find that seeing a ballet is like watching a nature documentary about tigers: every single time, I‘m floored by the strength, grace, elegance, power of the human body. The dancers really did that!! Modern productions, costumes (revealing and tight), and lighting only emphasize this.
Such was again the case with the Staatsballett Berlin production of WILLIAM FORSYTHE at Deutsche Oper Berlin, a performance of three very different choreographies by the man himself. What I most enjoy about Forsythe‘s work (and modern ballet in general) is the androgyny of the choreographies: often, male and female dancers make very similar movements, equally fierce and fluid, breaking some gendered conventions the perception of dance. At times, same-sex interaction further challenges the strong heteronormativity of classical ballet.
APPROXIMATE SONATA OF 2016 is a sequence of intimate pas de deux, with dancers moving in and out of frame to form pairs in various constellations (though always with one man, one woman). The sequence is ended by a lone dancer gracefully moving to a violent soundtrack evoking gun shots, firework, or static aux crackling.
ONE FLAT THING, REPRODUCED was my highlight of the evening. The ensemble starts of the piece by dragging a grid of heavy metal tables from the darkness to the front of the stage, evoking a heavy brass operatic opening. The piece itself is set to something my parents would flatly call noise, while I would (pretentiously) describe it as a hypnotizing arhythmic, atonal series of percussive industrial sounds with modulating pitch, tempo, and beat. The dancer jerkingly move around the tables, using each other’s bodies as support to slide under and jump over/onto them. The movements seem random, but regularly sync up to show there is, in fact, a group choreography. The combination of intense sound, movement and unrelenting tempo make this something I playfully call “brain rot ballet” (as an homage to chronically online scrolling): the brain is so stimulated that thoughts are not allowed to wander beyond what is immediately perceived.
Finally, BLAKE WORKS I is a series of solo, pair and group dances set to music by a James Blake, interrupted by It’s hard to beat the impact of ONE FLAT THING, but the group choreographies are impeccably accurate and visually pleasing. Unfortunately, the blackouts and curtain between each scene release a lot of the tension and suspense, forcing us (me) to re-focus every times.
Overall, a stellar evening of modern ballet in Berlin. Kudos to the woman next to me taking out her opera glasses every time a male dancer entered the stage. Me too girl, me too!
