★★★✰✰ Semperoper's dancers distort the classical ballet line more than the Paris Opera Ballet's (or ENB's) and don't bother much with fifth positions or precise épaulement for Forsythe's endless tendus. They seem contemporary dancers rather than étoiles being outrageous.
Tag - Impressing the Czar
The solemnity of the middle section of the programme is alleviated by irreverent visions of heaven and hell...
No-one will ever accuse the American-born choreographer William Forsythe, based in Germany since the seventies, of taking the easy way – to the contrary, he is a master of complexity.
Wherever Virginia Johnson goes, she seems to travel on a cloud, with a kind of regal composure few possess in our day. She appears imperturbable...
To preserve or to progress? And if the latter, how? These questions seem to come up increasingly often as companies grapple with the death of their founding choreographers, artists who created importantant schools of dance in their own image.