When I started dancing in the Forsythe Company, I had already been told many stories by Crystal and then experienced firsthand how Forsythe sees the development of a work and how he deals with distinct rhythms and timings that come from the dancers working with compositional material through a process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. He very specifically and purposefully organizes the effects of this process to manipulate your perception of time and space, and this forces you to work while you watch. And I think to avoid that work means you lose something about what is special in his work. He once told me in a rehearsal, ‘I prefer what happens to you when you think you don't know what you're doing.’ It was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment for so many reasons and I will never forget the gift he gave me that day.
Crystal Pite and William Forsythe both have developed mastery over their work. They are both skilled directors. They both love dancing and are inspired by bodies moving. I would say Crystal sees story in the world, in the body, and she chooses to shape her choreographic work around exposing the tensions, conflict, heroism and humor that could be found in stories. She's not so interested in confusion. She brings you along with her. She wants you to feel considered.
Forsythe immerses you in augmented reality and with calculated precision he tests your need to understand. I think he proposes that understanding is not a requirement but the byproduct of paying attention, and in the performing and performance are the instructions for how to pay attention. His works are unfinished and completed in the act of performing or witnessing them.
I find myself working on an approach somewhere between the strategies of the two. I like to build a score containing set material as well as improvisation that hopefully holds the piece in tact while allowing it to bend and shift slightly each time for performer and audience member. I do that by building structures where the dancers have to relate to each other in defined ways that I think leave space for the development of physicalities. The space that is intentionally left open is also filled in with real reactions and responses which trigger something in the work that feels like a story, like meaning. That way of working is important during the process with the dancers, but also in dialogue with the sound, costuming and lights.'
Discover Pite/ Spivey/ Forsythe
Photos: Jermaine Maurice Spivey already worked with the dancers of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen for the first time in 2017 when he came to rehearse Crystal Pite's Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue with them.
