Blake Works I

What it contains

• Contemporary Ballet · the whole ballet — described as Forsythe's first fully classical-idiom "ballet ballet" in fifteen years, built on speed, changing directions, and a vast classical vocabulary reworked through Forsythe's own choreographic language Source: "Blake Works I is also Forsythe's first "ballet ballet" in over fifteen years."
• Neoclassical Ballet · the whole ballet — critical description of a classical step vocabulary reworked with historical citation rather than narrative, danced to a pop/electronic score rather than a story ballet score Source: "Forsythe's vast classical vocabulary puts to shame many ballet choreographers working today: playful references to ballet history abound"

What is danced

The ballet is built for twenty-one dancers and runs on a vocabulary Forsythe himself framed as a return to a more classically legible idiom: the article calls it his first "ballet ballet" in over fifteen years, as distinct from the more deconstructed, task-based work he had been making with his own company. Reviewers describe it as demanding in speed and directional complexity rather than in extreme extension or partnering tricks - Laura Cappelle points to "the complexity, speed and changing directions of the choreography" and to a "vast classical vocabulary" laced with "playful references to ballet history."

Forsythe is reported to have drawn specifically on the Paris Opera Ballet's own house style - its "technical heritage" - with the handling of arms and feet keyed to French training, meaning the piece was built to fit this company's articulation rather than transplanted whole from elsewhere. Costuming reinforces the classroom register: twenty dancers appear in blue practice clothes resembling the Paris Opera Ballet School uniform, with one male dancer set apart in jeans and a T-shirt, a visual device the article records but does not further interpret choreographically. Beyond these points the source gives no scene-by-scene breakdown, so no internal structure (numbers, entrances, pas de deux) can be attributed to specific songs from the Blake score.

Context

Forsythe made his name at the Paris Opera Ballet with In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated (1987) and had not made a large-scale work for any company but his own since 1999. Blake Works I arrived at a moment of institutional transition - Millepied had just taken over as director of dance and had personally solicited the new piece - and it also arrived as Forsythe was moving away from the more radical, improvisation-driven work of his intervening years back toward a directly classical vocabulary, which is what the "ballet ballet" description in the article is marking.

Staging history

Blake Works I premiered as part of a Paris Opera Ballet triple bill of Forsythe works on 4 July 2016, by which point both Forsythe and Millepied were already on their way out of the company. Its North American premiere came with Boston Ballet in March 2019, and the article lists further stagings by Stuttgart Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, English National Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, the Ballet of Teatro alla Scala, Ballet West, and the Bayerisches Staatsballett, indicating rapid uptake into the international repertory within a few years of the premiere.

How to watch it

Watch for the contrast between the uniform blue practice clothes on twenty dancers and the single dancer in street clothes, a device the article notes without explaining, and for the way classical steps are quoted and skewed at speed rather than replaced outright - reviewers describe "rare combinations" built specifically around the French dancers' footwork and épaulement. There is no plot to track; the piece is structured around the seven songs from James Blake's album rather than a narrative sequence.

Questions