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Eidos: Telos
Stage/Lighting
William
Forsythe
Music
Thom Willems
Design
Joel Ryan
Violin
Maxim Franke
Trombone
Christian
Dembowski
Daniel
Scherf
Mike
Tetzner
Speaker
Dana Caspersen
Dancers
Yoko Ando
Talal Al-Muhanna
Alan Barnes
Cora
Bos-Kroese
Allison Brown
Francesca Caroti
Kevin Carron
Ander Zabala
Amancio Gonzalez
Thierry Guiderdoni
Ander Zabala
Demond Hart
Ayman Harper
Virginia Hendrickson
Prue Lang
Vanessa Le Mat
Andras Lukacs
Fabrice Mazliah
Roberta Mosca
Mauricio de
Oliveira
Nicole Peisl
Amy Raymond
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Sadler's Wells
3
- 10 November 2001
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It would take
a long time to describe William Forsythe's
Eidos: Telos
fully. A short sketch would go as follows.
The piece is divided into three parts.
The first presents six dancers and one
violinist in a stage set of differently-
timed clocks; as a metronome keeps an
even beat, the dancers perform spare,
twisting choreography. In the second
section, a topless woman speaks a long
monologue about death, flowers, clouds
and islands as she paces and writhes
through an apocalyptic stage set of
wires, screens, and yellow cellophane;
she then calls forth a band of dancers
whose simple movements accompany further
angry monologues from a man and a woman.
The third movement abandons both music
and speech to begin with a near-silent
group dance that uses the entire cast.
At first, we hear only occasional throbs
from a wire running down the middle
of the stage; then a noisy, violent
ending combines the various sounds of
all three parts: trombone, violin, percussion,
breathing, metronome, human voice.
Is all that
clear? That is only the barest of outlines.
There are so many obvious labels and
allusions stuffed into this piece that
the difficulty lies in knowing where
to begin or end any explication. The
first section has a title, "Self
Meant to Govern," while the second
and third have none–even Dana Caspersen,
the woman, is called only "Speaker"–and
audience members could have fun sketching
a theory of the three sections' correlation
to the Freudian divisions of superego,
ego and id. But what about the relation
of eidos and telos
Maybe the ballet is about art's use
of stasis and process. Yet none of the
three sections seems to develop from
any other: for example, Parts II and
III abandon the references to time that
seemed so crucial in Part I. Those later
parts instead tell us a lot about death
and rage. So is that horde in the second
section a nod to Giselle's
Wilis, then? The Greek of the title,
together with some of the music and
choreography in the opening section,
suggest alternate ballet allusions–to
Apollo
or Agon
those paragons of neoclassicism. (Eidos:
Telos began with a commission
to create a performance in honour of
Stravinsky.) But while this idea is
just strong enough to be unmistakable,
it is never examined. Neither is the
reference to aleatory work of Merce
Cunningham and John Cage. In Caspersen's
monologue, we hear another Greek influence,
the ancient stories of Persephone and
Arachne: "This voice is a spider's
voice," her speech begins. The
solo woman exploring a mythic identity:
now we are in Martha Graham territory.
But it is unclear what Eidos:
Telos wants to do with that allusion
and these archetypes; is this about
femininity, perhaps, or feminine creativity,
or memory, or something else? And then
there are the biographical associations
from Forsythe's own life, which he has
mentioned in interviews.
Multiplicity
of meaning can add to a ballet's power,
of course. Yet here, conceptual layers
only diffuse what emotion Eidos:
Telos might have been able to
summon. Forsythe's ballet is neither
genuinely questioning nor artfully polished.
He isn't interested in crafting an assured,
balanced work of art, but he does not
have the courage to follow any one of
his experimental convictions and see
where it might lead. Rather, Eidos:
Telos hopes that lots of dead
ends might appear, cumulatively, like
a new direction. The choreographic credit
adds "in association with the ensemble,"
and the piece does seem to bear the
mark of too many dramaturges: Everyone
adds his or her favorite postmodern
bit, no one takes responsibility for
the whole of the audience's experience.
This confusion
is most damaging in the ballet's lack
of control over its materials. Forsythe
uses it all: technology, lighting, set,
costume, voice, instrument, "noise."
And oh yes, dance. There are a few passages
that contain lovely steps and are pleasant
to watch, but in general, the choreography
isn't very interesting, and it often
does not try to be. Steps are there
only to link one idea to the next. The
ideas are explained through other means.
This warped emphasis seems self-defeating,
since the dancers of Ballett Frankfurt
are so obviously talented. A ballet
should not have to resort to female
nudity and an onstage brass trio–as
Part III of this piece does–to
generate excitement. And even when it
goes to such lengths, Eidos:
Telos cannot quite convince its
audience that it has anything meaningful
or moving to convey.
Siobhan
Peiffer |
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