Not a long evening, but what an impact, what a bundle of bliss, William Forsythe presses all the triggers, injects the right endorphins. Two short academic pieces before the interval and after that the one we’ve been waiting for, his liberating half-hour Playlist EP.
“In 2022, William Forsythe’s Playlist EP brought the house down”, so goes the press release. I was there, folks. What more is there left to say… it’s a celebration of dance and music, the spiritual and physical joy of hitting the spot and then to keep on going. A one-word review—Joyful—would suffice.
But the evening is more than his evergreen choreography, a mix of off-kilter classical and contemporary, strongly influenced by the twentieth century’s best, Balanchine, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. Not to mention athleticism. And music, its beat the driver... The stamina required is surely offset by passion and love of one’s art.
Before we are lifted out of our seats and minds, we see his nuts and bolts, two pieces new to me. Rearray (London Edition 2025), so-called because it’s a renewal of his 2011 piece for Sylvie Guillem and Nicolas Le Riche, revised for Paris Opera Ballet in 2024. Tonight we have principal Sangeun Lee partnered by Henry Dowden and Rentaro Nakaaki in this jigsaw piece of geometric structure. Is it physics or chemistry?
Blackout camera shutters and silences punctuated by David Morrow’s abstract composition make me think Cunningham, who choreographed without music. Beautifully held frozen tableaux, photoshoot style, then variations on variations. Was Forsythe testing a new vocabulary? Lee in practice clothes, the two men in drab (black and beige) daywear could be American abstract expressionism brushstrokes on a black canvas.
Herman Schmerman (Quintet), only about ten minutes long, for five superlative dancers, Aitor Arrieta, Alice Bellini, Ivana Bueno, Francesco Gabriele Frola, Swanice Luong, makes me think of New York City Ballet and their long-legged, high-speed dancers. And guess what, it was created for them in 1992. Classical and jazzy—I recall Tiler Peck & Friends visit here with their New York can-do dynamism. Thom Willems’s metallic score makes me think of AI doing the impossible. Moves are incredibly challenging. What a workout….
Playlist EP is workout times three. It seems as if the whole of English National Ballet has ended up on stage. In athletic style wear costumes, colours bright blue and pink (very Michael Craig-Martin palette)—the better to dazzle us—dancers come and go, singly, in pairs, in threes and fours, a dozen at a time in formation, first men, then women, then all of them. Is it an endurance test?
The music is pounding, soul, funky house and rap—the beat goes on, stretching time and strengths. Some look more comfortable than others, some more natural, but what diligent speed and timing. And those flexed wrists, so deliciously camp—they are birds on the wing, bodies rapping as they fly. Imagine that. It’s positively Olympian. And an everlasting love, as Natalie Cole sings—didn't Noël Coward say something about the potency of cheap music…? Potent is the word for Playlist (EP), sledgehammer potent.