William Forsythe returns to La Scala continuing his exploration of the musical output of British composer James Blake with Blake Works V, which runs from 10 to 30 May 2023. The programme is a suite of ballets on Blake's music, with pieces ranging from the beginning of his career to more recent compositions.
Blake Works I was created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016, and each of the four subsequent Blake Works programmes has been a unique project, with different selections of music, and designed for the different sized companies that Forsythe was working with. The production at La Scala is the first full version of this work.
The music for Prologue, an overture, is the song Lindesfarne I, repeated several times throughout the work and each time with a different choreographic interpretation. Forsythe was given a freehand by company director Manuel Legris to cast the dancers – Maria Celeste Losa, Giulia Lunardi, Domenico Di Cristo, Navrin Turnbull, Edward Cooper, Francesco Mascia, Saïd Ramos Ponce – resulting in a selection not based on company rank. Legris said, “It opened my eyes to talents unseen before in some dancers,” and Forsythe remarked, “Well, we all see dancers in different ways.”
The Cecchetti style which is still preserved in part at the La Scala school, gives a dynamic that Forsythe has enjoyed exploiting. “They spin… Italians spin! The French not so much,” he said, looking towards Legris who pouted comically. “So I use this quality in the new piece, the Prologue.”
The second piece sees dancers from the company perform The Barre Project, conceived at the height of the pandemic as a tribute to dancers who were trying to maintain their technique by practising at home. It was created with Tiler Peck, Lex Ishimoto, Brooklyn Mack, and Roman Mejia, filmed, and then streamed worldwide in 2021.
“The choreography of Barre Project,” explained Forsythe, “is not a traditional or everyday arrangement of academic sequences. Rather, it is a rigorous exposition of the kinetic logic of winding and unfolding that underlies the most fundamental elements of classical ballet vocabulary.
“I've always worked in structured environments, being told when to start a rehearsal, when to break, when to eat, but here we didn't have a schedule. If Tiler, for example, was tired, we'd say, ‘Ok, let's call it a day,' or we'd push on if we felt like it. There was no opening night deadline. It was very calm. You can get a lot done with calm, even if the resulting steps are very, very hard.”
He chose total calm when he moved to live on 200 acres in an American forest, but he enjoys returning to Europe. “There's nothing where I now live of what we would call culture. When I told my mother of my plans, she said, ‘Why? There's no one there,' and I said, ‘Exactly!'
“It takes me 14 hours to get to Milan, but wow, how great it is to get back to Europe. I'm in a beautiful, small apartment, but when I looked at property prices, I was shocked – a one-room apartment costs more than my 200 acres! But Milan is one of the most magnificent cities on Earth.”
Blake Works I closes the evening and is performed for the first time by La Scala's dancers, with an ensemble of 21 for the seven pieces taken from Blake's album The Colour in Anything. Forsythe says, “It celebrates the delightful tension that arises from the introduction of a choreographic exception to the conventional rules of ballet.
“It was created for the Paris Opera Ballet just after Benjamin Millepied left as director. There was a feeling of divorce guilt. The dancers were feeling a little lost. I asked them, and coaches such as Élisabeth Platel, about the French style, to understand better the essence of the French style. So Blake Works contains ‘quotes' from other ballets and a French way of performing steps.”
Forsythe noted that the structure of the programme, Blake Works V, is rather like a dance class there's the warm-up (Prologue), the barre (Barre Project) and the centre (Blake Works).
Forsythe has now been choreographing for over 45 years. His interest in the architecture of the body and space has led him to produce a wide range of projects, including installations, and films and creations based on digital technologies.
La Scala first saw his work in 1998 when the company performed the premiere of Quartetto, with Approximate Sonata and In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, followed in the same year by the Ballett Frankfurt on tour with Hypothetical Stream 2, Enemy in the Figure and Quintett. T In the Middle was included in other programmes in 2001 and 2010, in a Forsythe Evening that also featured Herman Schmerman and Artifact Suite. After more than ten years, William Forsythe's signature piece returned to La Scala in July 2021 with The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, created for Ballet Frankfurt in 1996, and premiered at La Scala as part of a Contemporary Evening.
SERATA WILLIAM FORSYTHE – BLAKE WORKS V
PROLOGUE
Choreography, sets and costumes
William Forsythe
Music
James Blake
Lights
Tanja Rühl
from original designs by Brandon Stirling Baker
New production Teatro alla Scala
First performance
THE BARRE PROJECT
Choreography, sets and costumes
William Forsythe
Music
James Blake
Lights
Tanja Rühl
from original designs by Brandon Stirling Baker
New production Teatro alla Scala
BLAKE WORKS I
Choreography and sets
William Forsythe
Music
James Blake
Costumes
Dorothee Merg, William Forsythe
Lights
Tanja Rühl
New production Teatro alla Scala
First performance: 4 July 2016, Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, Palais Garnier
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
