The Forsythe Programme English National Ballet

David Morrow / Thom Willems / Various

The Forsythe Programme

English National Ballet

Dancers –

Rearray (London Edition 2025)
Dancers – Emily Suzuki, Jose María Lorca Menchón, Miguel Angel Maidana

William Forsythe – Choreography and Stage Design
Niels Lanz – Sound Design
Tanja Rühl – Lighting Design
Dorothee Merg – Costume design

Herman Schmerman (Quintet)
Dancers – Georgia Bould, Julia Conway, Noam Durand, Minju Kang, Rhys Antoni Yeomans

William Forsythe – Choreography and Stage Design
Niels Lanz – Sound Design
Tanja Rühl – Lighting Design

Playlist (EP)
Dancers –
Surely Shorty
Matthew Astley, Henry Dowden, Francesco Gabriele Frola, Shunhei Fuchiyama, Skyler Martin, Jose María Lorca Menchón, Rentaro Nakaaki, Nathaniel Ritter-Magot, Martinho Santos, Ken Saruhashi, Lorenzo Trossello, Erik Woolhouse

Vegas
Alice Bellini, Angela Wood
Anna Ciriano, Ashley Coupal, Carolyne Galvao, Francesca Velicu

Impossible
Matthew Astley, Henry Dowden, Francesco Gabriele Frola, Shunhei Fuchiyama, Skyler Martin, Jose María Lorca Menchón, Rentaro Nakaaki, Nathaniel Ritter-Magot, Martinho Santos, Ken Saruhashi, Lorenzo Trossello, Erik Woolhouse

Location
Precious Adams, Junor Souza

Sha La La Means I Love You
Katja Khaniukova, Aitor Arrieta
Swanice Luong, Eric Snyder, Rentaro Nakaaki, Ken Saruhashi

This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)
Julia Conway, Gareth Haw
William Forsythe – Choreography

William Forsythe – Choreography and Stage Design
Niels Lanz – Sound Design
Tanja Rühl – Lighting Design

The 75-year-old American-born choreographer William Forsythe continues to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary classical ballet after almost 50 years of dance-making. At the heart of his sometimes-challenging output is his deep love for classical ballet technique, a love which has in recent years made itself again increasingly apparent. Briefly taken up by The Royal Ballet in the 1990s, he was then dropped from the repertoire in favour of Wayne McGregor, the company’s current joyless Resident Choreographer whose work is dead behind the eyes when compared with Forsythe’s joyful celebration of the art form. This was showcased by an impressive English National Ballet taking a welcome break from their usual diet of full-length works for a short season at Sadler’s Wells who performed an eclectic trio of pieces which most definitely demonstrated the choreographer’s continuing mastery of the stage. The company has a warm relationship with Forsythe, having first created work with him in 2018 in the form of Playlist (1,2), while director Aaron S Watkin was himself a dancer under the choreographer at Frankfurt Ballet in years past.

Rearray (London Edition 2025) is the second reworking of a piece first made for Sylvie Guillem and Nicholas Le Riche in 2011 which was made into a trio for Paris Opera Ballet last year and has now been tweaked again for ENB. It is an elusive, almost baroque work, exploring planes of movement with elaborate arm movements and featuring Forsythe’s penchant for ‘lights on, lights off’ in a series of tableaux for one, two or three dancers in which movements outlined at the outset are repeated, altered and explored. It is not an easy watch because both ‘music’ and dance are uncompromising, pure dance dissected with surgeon-like precision, the innards of dance laid bare. The dancers were outstanding in a work where there is simply nowhere to hide, Emily Suzuki long of limb, secure of balance and insouciant in the face of considerable technical demands.

Hermann Schmerman is a work which contributed to world-wide acclaim for Forsythe after its creation in New York 1992, and is still considered a ‘classic’ of his repertoire. Here it was given in its original form, a 12-minute-long quintet for orange-clad dancers simply enjoying their art form, dancing full-out for us all to enjoy, accompanied by a trademark Thom Willems ‘pots and pans’ composition. The movement is, in essence, classical with more than a touch of New York City Ballet pizzazz; the five dancers (a First Soloist and four Soloists) launched themselves gleefully into all its challenges with wholly satisfactory results.

Playlist (1,2) was an irresistible two-parter for 12 men made in 2018, the infectious music (Peven Everett’s Surely Shorty and Lion Babe’s Impossible) mirrored by movement of drive, energy and enjoyment. In 2022, he expanded it to six tracks and introduced women, making it an utterly brilliant stand-alone work, ideal to close a programme and guaranteed to send the audience into the night as happy as Larry.  The work demonstrates Forsythe’s own admiration for Geroge Balanchine with whom he shares an uncanny ability to fill the stage with classical dancing of extraordinary inventiveness. The work it resembles most is perhaps Symphony in C, in structure and in its final fusing together of dancers from all parts in a joyous finale. Invidious as it might be single out performances, the contribution of Lead Principal Francesco Gabriele Frola was simply outstanding, a dancer at the top of his form who managed to make a huge impression, surrounded as he was by others giving their considerable all. 

For anyone who loves the art form of ballet, this programme is essential viewing, and Playlist (EP) is a rare, joyful example amidst the mediocrity and doom-and-gloom of modern dance creation of a true celebration of dancing and the ability to lift the collective spirit with movement.