“Impressing the Czar”
Royal Ballet of Flanders
Rose Theater
New York, NY
July 19, 2008
by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
William Forsythe’s “Impressing the Czar” is really two ballets created
like a pearl. The familiar “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” is the central core;
the lesser-known, theatrical sections of the ballet were deposited around it like
nacreous layers. Nureyev commissioned “In the Middle” for his
“children” at the Paris Opera Ballet; it had its premiere in May of
1987 and the original cast included Sylvie Guillem, Isabelle Guérin,
Manuel Legris and Laurent Hilaire. Forsythe added the other sections
of “Czar” for his own company; Ballett Frankfurt first performed it at
the beginning of the following year. Paris brought “In the Middle” to
New York during their visit to the Met a few months later and gave the
first performance at a gala in Nureyev’s honor. The audience booed.
Frankfurt danced the full “Czar” at SUNY Purchase the next summer; it returned
this time performed by the Royal Ballet of Flanders.
“Czar” begins with “Potemkin’s Unterschrift” (Potemkin’s Signature) – Hellzapoppin’ in a gilded court. Forsythe took the Presto movement from Beethoven’s 14th string quartet, wound up a hundred plot devices well past where they should be wound and sent them careening onto the stage with a sproing. The lights were too bright and the music was too loud. Women were in dark gowns, the men in brocade frock coats. Others raced around in leotards and tights. Some stuck masking tape on their faces, or did ballet mime at top speed, turning it into gibberish. Golden objects littered the stage, cones, arrows – artifacts.
Forsythe was up to his usual disturbance tactics – a fake phone call was broadcast over the loudspeaker of someone trying to speak to one of the dancers and being told by the Lincoln Center employees that the dancer was onstage and couldn’t be disturbed. Stretched like a rubber band around the insanity were Forsythe’s beautiful enchaînements – his calling card. His dances are hyperballet pulled from and twisted around its axis, but exciting to watch.
Helen Pickett, a former dancer with Forsythe’s company, now a choreographer, played Agnes and Craig Davidson was Roger Wilcot (pronounced “Wilco,” get it?) Agnes, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform and pageboy wig, had been dropped into this world and was trying to orient herself, literally, as she shouted on a walkie-talkie to Wilcot, “I am somewhere in the left hand corner of the composition!” This diatribe contained references to television, natch, and Mr. Peanut (here spelled Pnut). The program notes said this was about high art and its conventions from the Renaissance forward. That was in there somewhere, (even at his most arty here, Forsythe wasn’t completely obscure) but you’d be (P)nuts to try and make exact sense of it. Welcome to Western culture, reflected in a shattered mirror.
“In the Middle” has already been performed in New York; the Kirov brought it to City Center in April. The pure dance divertissement has a different context in Flanders’ performance. The ballet fits better on the Rose Theater stage than it did at City Center, where it felt cramped and claustrophobic. When Paris or the Kirov dance it, “In the Middle” is about eugenics. You’re watching the best dancers in the world; what can they do?
Flanders is not as lethal as those institutions. Its permission to stage Forsythe’s major works has pushed Flanders into prominence on the festival circuit in a matter of a few years. It is a decent company, and the dancers look their best here, a notch or two better than they look in Balanchine. But it is not a company of superdancers. Aki Saito was unnervingly and gyroscopically precise in Guillem’s role, but also dry. What Flanders offers is something closer to the style of Forsythe’s own dancers. The big dogs do “In the Middle” their way according to their schooling. Kathryn Bennetts, the Artistic Director, was Forsythe’s ballet mistress in Frankfurt, and the dancers can do his quirky placement and the tiny wagglings from club dance he added to classical vocabulary. It didn’t look modified to the standards and style of a greater institution. Particularly exceptional was Eugéniy Kolesnik, who got the aggression, the blinding speed and wild batterie as well as the variations from classical style.
The big difference between the great ballet blancs and Forysthe’s ballet noir is that the ballet blancs are linked thematically to the rest of a work; they are its distillation into movement. At the end of “In the Middle,” the pearl and its central core remain discrete. The earlier ballet still seemed isolated and never integrated into the full work.
Part III, “La Maison de Mezzo-Prezzo,” was an auction where Pickett took center stage as an auctioneer and Mistress of Ceremonies. Western culture got sold off to the highest bidder, a piece at a time. In Euros. “Things are getting a little bit out of control” Pickett said more than once as things veered towards chaos. The text (credited to Kathleen Fitzgerald, who originated the role, and Forsythe) had been fine-tuned for these performances. Referring to the Rose Theater’s location in the Time-Warner Building’s egregious shopping center, Pickett exhorted, “You’re in a mall, let’s go shopping!” Anyone who’s lived in New York since Frankfurt’s visits here in the late ‘80s understands the bitter cynicism in the text about Disney and condos. The gold of the first section, gilt for gilt’s sake, became the money and lucre of the city. “Is this a metaphor?” Pickett asked, “I think not!”
The work climaxed with “Bongo Bongo Nageela” and “Mr. Pnut Goes to the Big Top.” The entire cast, male and female, were all in schoolgirl uniforms, dancing in swirling groups, occasionally lifting their skirts to show their panties. It was like Japanese anime run amok, but Forsythe has an expert command of groups in motion and an understanding of their power, something he gets both from the Rockettes and good ol’ Marius Petipa. Many of his ballet references are to Balanchine, but Petipa is in there as well. Forsythe throws a polonaise into the first part (blink and you’ll miss it) and when one of the women travels down a line of four men to balance, the scent of the Rose Adagio lingers.
Forsythe has a particular importance and resonance to the ballet generation that came of age in the eighties because he’s ours. I don’t think I’ve heard Leslie Stuck’s music for “Behind the China Dogs,” the ballet Forsythe did for New York City Ballet in ’88, for close to two decades; I recognized it mixed into the score within moments. He may be 15-20 years older than us but he reflects our time and mores; our electronica, our social dances, our club kid tendencies, dark political and economic landscape, sensibility, drag and gallows humor. He was our avant-garde. Modern dancers of the same era would remind us that Pina Bausch did all the theatrical stuff first and with more assurance. They’re right, but Forsythe beats her at sheer kinetic mastery. To a modern dancer that might not matter; that’s probably why we went into ballet and they went into modern.
Next year Flanders will revive the full “Artifact,” a ballet that’s been a success in the suite version Forsythe created in 2004, twenty years after its creation. “Czar” is two decades old now as well. How does Forsythe feels about the interest in his older works? He hasn’t choreographed in this style (except for remixes) for years. Will this inspire him to revisit it? “China Dogs” ought to be revived by NYCB, but will Forsythe allow it? He has not permitted revivals of some other early works. Not everything from that era aged well; when Frankfurt brought “Enemy in the Figure” to Brooklyn in 2001 it seemed dated rather than of its era and his post-ballet works seemed obscure. Funny how two of his best ballets, this and “Artifact,” are ballets about ballet. It’s one of the most hermetic of art forms.
Yes, “Czar” is sometimes arty and pretentious. Those are Forsythe’s weaknesses, but they come as a package deal with experimentation, which is one of his strengths. It isn’t as if Forsythe’s auction is so far from the truth. American ballet is being slowly garroted by expensive, lobotomized dansicals or fourth-rate fusion choreography being produced from distrust of the audience and terror that anything but a sure-fire hit will destroy a company. I may feel betrayed by Forsythe for not loving ballet enough, for not being Ashton, Balanchine or Petipa as well as himself, but I’d rather watch this than almost any new ballet I’ve seen produced in this country in the past two decades.
copyright © 2008 by Leigh Witchel
Photos by Stephanie Berger of “Impressing the Czar”:
Top: Mikel Jauregui, Craig Davidson, Claire Pascal, Géraldine Guyot
Middle: Sanny Kleef and Claire Pascal
Bottom: Karina Jäger-von Stülpnagel, Sébastien Tassin, Christopher Hill, Kevin Durwael