Artifact/Royal Ballet of Flanders, Sadler’s Wells - review

William Forsythe’s Artifact was the first dance he made after taking over at Frankfurt Ballet in 1984. It has been described as a ballet about ballet — from its past, in the stately pacing of the courtly dances, to its future, and how Forsythe intended to change it for ever.

One other thing that Artifact is about, however, is the futility of trying to interpret it. “Welcome,” says Kate Strong’s bewigged, dottily imperious Woman in Historical Costume, “to what you think you see.” Thinking, seeing, remembering and forgetting pursue themselves, with Samuel Beckett-like obsessiveness, through her dialogue with a querulous Man with Megaphone, as if circling the plughole of their own extinction.

Eva Dewaele’s mute, pale Other Person is the intermediary between these dispossessed concepts and the dance which, despite its energy and its extensive vocabulary of steps, remains as perfect, closed and uncompromising as a set of geometrical axioms. Her semaphoring looks like attempts to translate between two alien modes of existence.

The artistic director of Royal Ballet Flanders, Kathryn Bennetts, has grafted the Forsythe style expertly onto her superb young company. The ensemble deals immaculately with his complex, interleaving patterns. And Akie Saito, Wim Vanlessen, Yuri Matsuura and David Jonathan dance the second act — to a painfully amplified Bach Chaconne for solo violin, and punctuated by a curtain slamming up and down — with the rising, fine-tuned frenzy of a Formula One engine being revved from idling to the point where it’s about to fly apart.

Until tomorrow (0844 412 4300, sadlerswells.com).

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