Review: English National Ballet’s The Forsythe Programme – the men come to the fore
Jonathan Gray sees ENB’s The Forsythe Programme and finds the men of the company “spruce, assured, playful and sexy” in “an evening of fast-paced dance”.
| Title | The Forsythe Programme: Rearray (London Edition 2025), Herman Schmerman (Quintet), Playlist (EP) |
| Company | English National Ballet |
| Venue | Sadler’s Wells, London |
| Date | 10 April 2005 |
| Reviewer | Jonathan Gray |
English National Ballet (ENB) has built quite a repertoire of works by the maverick American choreographer William Forsythe over the past decade, and it was good to see the company dancing his ballets again during The Forsythe Programme, which opened at London’s Sadler’s Wells on 10 April. In fact, two of the ballets – Rearray (London Edition 2025) and the Quintet from Herman Schmerman – were new acquisitions for ENB, but the programme ended with the popular Playlist that Forsythe originally made for the company in 2018 and then expanded for Boston Ballet the following year. It’s an uplifting programme that had the audience cheering at the end.
Playlist was an instant success for ENB at its premiere, with most of the company’s male dancers taking on the Forsythe style like ducks to water, but since then I have felt that ENB – like The Royal Ballet when it danced Forsythe back in the 1990s – is not always entirely comfortable or totally convincing in his work. It’s easy to be awestruck by much of the choreography’s high-octane energy, but in comparison to, say, the Paris Opéra Ballet, there is a wooliness to ENB’s dancing, particularly among the women, and the sharp execution and attack that Forsythe’s steps need seems to be lacking, as well as the nonchalant sense of ease and insouciance. Don’t get me wrong, ENB’s dancers are very good, but they somehow just miss that very last note of Forsythe edge.
Rearray (London Edition 2025) is a reworking of a duet Forsythe originally made for Sylvie Guillem and Nicolas Le Riche in 2011, which he then revised for the Paris Opéra Ballet last year. Now a trio for a woman and two men, it’s a rather dry exercise that focuses on strident poses, jumps and turns and much upper body work for the dancers. For some of the time, they don’t so much dance together as dance around each other, and their brief solos, duets and trios are punctuated by short blackouts. The tall and reed-slim Sangeun Lee twists and turns her body into off-centre pirouettes, arabesques and exaggerated Swan Lake poses, whilst the sometimes-comical Henry Dowden and Rentaro Nakaaki appear almost as if they were two halves of the same person. Although they are not at all alike, they link their arms and entwine their limbs. All three dancers were excellent.
Herman Schmerman (Quintet) is much more familiar Forsythe. Originally created for New York City Ballet in 1992, it is a whizz-bang cornucopia of dazzling yet edgy steps and poses. The cast – including Aitor Arrieta, Alice Bellini, Ivana Bueno and Swanice Luong – were good, but the outstanding performance came from Francesco Gabriele Frola, whose dancing was thrilling, explosive and punchy, his coruscating turns and space-devouring jumps so exciting they brought you to the edge of your seat.
It was Frola, joined by the brilliant Rhys Antoni Yeomans and Nathaniel Ritter-Magot, who impressed the most during the concluding Playlist, their dancing outclassing nearly everyone else on stage. All the men were spruce, assured, playful and sexy, and if some seemed not quite to understand the difference between conventional classical virtuoso dancing and Forsythe virtuosity, it was nonetheless an exciting and carefree display of male dancing. Playlist is a marvellous work, packed with infectious dancing, and in this expanded version it gives ENB’s women plenty to perform too, although I didn’t think on the evidence of this performance that they were quite in the same league as the men. I prefer the ballet in its original form, but in this version, it does make an exhilarating finale to an evening of fast-paced dance.
Jonathan Gray was editor of Dancing Times from 2008 to 2022.
He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. He was on the Curatorial Staff of the Theatre Museum, London, from 1989 to 2005, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty.
Jonathan Gray has also contributed to the Financial Times and The Guardian, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005. He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
