William Forsythe II

This evening brings together two central works by choreographer William Forsythe, who see ballet not exclusively as a purely kinesthetic event, but as a product of a collection of meaning carriers. In the enigmatic duet Of Any If And (1995), the stage becomes a medium of existential investigation. The title is taken from a fragment from Lucretius's teaching poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). While Lucretius describes the dissolution of the body after death as an offer of comfort through philosophical insight, Forsythe attempts to reverse this process scenographically. Choreography thus becomes an ongoing process in the context of an attempt to postpone the decay of form. In Artifact Suite (2004), Forsythe revisits his groundbreaking work Artifact (1984) and condenses it into a strictly formal and energetic variation. In the first part, to Bach's Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor, Forsythe uses the medium of a falling curtain as a metaphor for the omissions in ballet history. Just as the intervening phases of development of classical ballet technology have receded into the background over the centuries, Forsythe's curtain visually imitates the inaccessibility of this genesis and its current distant origins. In the second part, composer Eva Crossman-Hecht builds on Ferruccio Busoni's transcription of Bach's Chaconne from 1893. Her suite of driving musical variations finally develops a disturbing “primal force,” something that is similar to the most basic pressure conditions that can be experienced in large but limited demonstrations of physical force. Recommended from 10 years