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The program opened with Second Detail by William Forsythe to an electronic score by Thom Willems that Stephane Lebard's program notes describe as, "deliberately grating on ears and teeth, sounds like a hurdygurdy and creates a mechanical momentum, but with a humorous approach." That high-fallutin' descriptiveness was also applied to the choreography, which Lebard misrepresented as "a pure dance work, on pointe for the women, with a classical line reminiscent of Balanchine, where one can see a theme and variations on the one hand -- or possibly the stripping down to the basics of a machine, examined minutely wheel by wheel." (Huh?)
In the first part of the piece, 14 dancers, in light blue-grey leotards, alternately stand, dance, and sit in a row of chairs at the back of the stage in groups of various sizes. My seat was in the front row, from which I missed a lot of patterns in this piece. (And I heard a lot of breathing
) The musical phrases were the same length as in the Michael Torke scores that Peter Martins used in his leotard ballets for Heather Watts; although Forsythe's was more accomplished and less mannered, the corresponding dance phrases were likewise limited, although, in Forsythe's case, that may have been deliberate.The dancers' range, on the whole, also seemed limited, and I wasn't sure if this was the choreography or the dancers themselves. There were only two dancers that caught my eye in a good way: there was a woman who looked a bit like the late Carolyn Bessette, with a touch of Darci Kistler, and a man with dark, wavy hair, both of whose movements were open and free. A (dyed) redhead with a short haircut received a big ovation; I thought she had a lot of energy, but she didn't grab me though arc or phrasing. Another woman, who received the biggest ovation, was very tall -- a la Muriel Maffre of SFB -- and she danced a solo and pas de deux, but her facial expressions were awful; her face never stopped contorting for a second she was moving, and in my opinion her body didn't reflect that same involvement in the dance.
What was jarring about the piece was when a woman entered from upstage center in a white toga that looked like it was made from disposable hospital gowns, with hair down, and bare feet, doing choreography that was very much modern dance in the middle of the ballet people. I wondered if this was supposed to be Forsythe's version of The Rite of Spring, and she was the maiden being sacrificed to the Big Bad Ballet Machine. Or something.
The opening of Russell Maliphant's twelvetwentyone looked like the end of my Feldenkrais class, with six men on the floor, rolling slowly and twisting from side to side. Gradually, to music by Mukul, the men rose and were joined by six women; soon the women were doing slow balances against the men and all were alternating between slow rises and falls. (A lot of the movement in this part of the dance could have been choreographed by Mark Morris, except that the music Morris would have chosen would have demanded different development and emphasis.) A long solo for a man followed, and it was mesmerizing in the changing planes and directions. The solo was followed by three couples who performed duets of alternating intertwining and parallel arms, a wonderful dance of the upper bodies.
A couple then entered, where the woman did lots of leans against the man alternating with lateral, shoulder level lifts. A second man joined them, as the woman was shifted slowly between them, and then as a third man joined, gender distinctions started to fade and were gone by the time the fourth entered the movement. Then the rest of the dancers joined, and the movement because a bit more intense, in which a bit of the undulating character of the piece was lost. This piece was danced beautifully by the Company, and, for me, surprisingly the most satisfying piece, despite a bit of fall-off toward the end. So much for coming with pre-conceived notions.
The last piece turned out to be Jardi Tancat. (I was hoping for Arenal, which I had never seen live.) The comparison to PNB's performances of the dance was not good for LOB, for the piece is very earthbound, and requires deep plies and pliant backs, which the dancers, who were so genuine in the attempt to convey the world in this piece, did not have, with the exception of the man in red.
In Second Detail, they looked like a a modern dance company that was forced to take ballet class, with a few members of an opera ballet whose members spent most of their time vamping as Egyptian slaves in Aida and faux Spanish dancers in La Traviata. On the other hand, in Jardi Tancat, they looked like ballet dancers trying hard to perform modern ballet. Only in twelvetwentyone, a modern dance piece, did the dancers looked like they were in their skins; it was the only "juicy" dancing of the night. Unfortunately there was no casting insert, and even at close range, I couldn't tell if this was a matter of casting, or if this is really a modern dance, not even a modern ballet, company.
And that's quite typical of what happened, or is going to happen, in most French cities. I guess the problems of style you noticed probably are the result of that bizarre policy (ballet-trained dancers dancing nearly no ballet works), and unfortunately we're going to see more and more of it in France (and there are rumors that the Ballet de Marseille is going the same way 