One of the world’s greatest dance-makers, William Forsythe, 72, has redefined classical ballet over a career of more than 40 years. His best known works include In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and One Flat Thing, reproduced. After a long period in Germany, running his own companies and deconstructing ballet’s fundamental principles, he now divides his time between there and his native US, working as a choreographer for major ballet companies such as Paris Opera Ballet, Boston Ballet and English National Ballet. He lives in Vermont with his wife, the former dancer Dana Caspersen, now a world expert on conflict resolution.
How are you doing and where are you doing it?
Covid has kept me in Vermont, where I bought a place in the early 90s when my kids were young, after my wife [the dancer Tracy-Kai Maier] died. I thought it would keep them away from drugs and crime! It turned out to be the one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Never in my adult life have I been in one spot for so long, and I am loving not being on the road the whole time.
But you’re on your way to London to stage Blake Works I and Playlist (EP) for English National Ballet?
I’m all excited. Outfits! I have been wearing lined sweatpants every day for months.
Both works feature classical ballet steps set to pop music – James Blake and a playlist that includes Peven Everett, Lion Babe and Natalie Cole. What appeals about pop?
It underestimates James Blake’s full skill set to call him a songwriter. I call him a composer. His structures are very classically proportioned, which I find true of a lot of pop music. The time signatures and the tempi align themselves with classical ballet formations such as allegro, grand allegro, petit allegro. The music sparks the classical imagination through the liveliness and vitality of its impetus.
When the first parts of Playlist premiered at ENB in 2018, the whole thing was like a party.
Historically, the original ballets were fetes, social celebrations, and I wanted to make a celebratory composition.
You began training as a classical dancer in your late teens, and before that you were a club dancer. Has that influenced your style?
The pop music I grew up with was largely African American. Who isn’t influenced by that? I don’t like rock’n’roll. I love funk. My dancing self was shaped by that music. So, my relationship to ballet is filtered through the influence of African American music.
Did you dance in clubs?
I was a stripper at one point! My very naughty roommate at college said you could make a lot of money, and I was like, OK, how? But that was a brief stint. The narcissist in me loved being admired, and I thought they really liked my dancing. Then the penny dropped.
How much are you trying to shift how classical ballet is seen?
I’m throwing the glove down to colleagues. I’m an old man, and I’m doing this. You are young people, why are you acting like Jerome Robbins [the great New York City Ballet and Broadway choreographer who created West Side Story]? He’s already been dead for 24 years, let’s move on. I think maybe because I am older, I understand the environment better and I realise that if you do what everyone wants, or what the marketing department thinks is a good idea, it will never work.
Why’s that?
Marketing departments are based on fear; they are always trying to second-guess, and you can’t do that. You have to ask: why are people in the theatre? With dance, especially classical ballet, it still often does have to do with some celebratory facet. If someone does a triple turn in the air, we all applaud. This guy prevailed over physics and centrifugal force. It says something about the human condition that we are capable of that. Why is bravura pooh-poohed in dance when everyone thinks the Olympics are just fine?
Why go back to classical ballet when you had travelled so far from it in your work?
It’s interesting because it’s hard. It’s really tricky to make. You have to define your relationship to the traditions of craft. I want to make ballet more popular. I want it to be something people look forward to rather than just enduring. Think about all those poor husbands and boyfriends who get schlepped to the ballet, and when they see Playlist, they’re finally going: that was OK!
Why do you want to make ballet more approachable?
It’s ballet’s politics that are of another era, not the form itself. Ballet is like the alphabet. It’s like saying there is no more writing after Shakespeare. He used letters from the alphabet and words that were made with letters. The alphabet of ballet is eternal – you just have to use it.
What was your most innovative work? Or has all your work been innovative?
Very sweet of you to say! Let’s look at the word innovation: it means renewal in a way. I don’t know if I’ve been innovative, but I’ve been resourceful. I am trying to mine the form, look at different parts of it and say what does this do if I put it in another context.
In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, which you made for the Paris Opera Ballet when Rudolf Nureyev was in charge, remains a defining work. What was it like to work with Nureyev?
Oh, wonderful. He was just so supportive and great fun. When I first went to Paris, I ended up in intensive care for a month with a weird tropical disease and nearly died, and he put me up at his apartment with a private servant. It was fabulous. I did my recuperation there, looking at all his art and books and films. He’d ring the butler and tell him to put on a video for me, because I needed to see it. He was really excited about providing me with experiences. I loved him and he loved me too.
Your life has been full of hurdles. You nearly died, and your second wife, Tracy-Kai, died of cancer at the age of 32. Do you have strategies for coping?
Tracy’s death was a big milestone. You learn that there is neither rhyme nor reason to the universe. People die and things happen for inexplicable reasons. I feel a lot of love for other people. It’s a capacity I have. I feel part of something, of the whole scheme of things, I don’t feel like I am in any separate realm of experience.
I’m the kind of person who will kiss flowers and trees. I’m that kind of goon. I don’t consider that at all odd. That’s how I feel about that tree. It’s 200 years old and it’s a living thing, standing there not running away from me, so I am going to give it a hug and a kiss.
If you weren’t a choreographer what would you be?
A landscape architect. Such interesting timing involved. Organic timings are on a different scale. I would also have loved to be a florist. I had a scholarship to go to Japan to study with an ikebana master at the end of my teens, but I chose to do a theatre project instead. I still spend time as an amateur ikebanist but you can’t dabble. It’s like being a ballet dancer. It’s a life choice, a worldview.
English National Ballet’s The Forsythe Evening is at Sadler’s Wells, London, 31 March-10 April