San Francisco Ballet

PAS/PARTS 2016 PRODUCTION CREDITS Music: "Pas/Parts" by Thom Willems, used by arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc. publisher and copyright owner. Costumes constructed by Christopher Read, Toronto, Canada. Scenic construction by San Francisco Ballet Carpentry and Scenic Departments. William Forsythe was one of the first choreographers Helgi Tomasson engaged after becoming San Francisco Ballet's artistic director and principal choreographer in 1985. The former director of Frankfurt Ballet and The Forsythe Company made New Sleep for SF Ballet in 1987, and though Tomasson wanted to bring him back to create another work, 15 years went by before their schedules aligned. When they did, Forsythe remade Pas/Parts, created for Paris Opera Ballet in 1999, for the 2016 SF Ballet Repertory Season. In so doing, he revised the work so significantly that what was to have been a North American premiere was, in effect, a world premiere. Forsythe says that being able to re-create this ballet on this particular company was worth the long wait. "I wanted to do it at San Francisco Ballet because of this musical quality I've seen here for 30 years. It's something that Helgi has insisted upon." Forsythe wanted the ballet to be more classical — "it was unnecessarily modern in some respects," he says — and with the Company's dancers and their musicality, he "found new freedom in it by revisiting the classicism." For audiences, perhaps the most familiar aspects of Forsythe's works are his use of syncopation and counterpoint and the three-dimensionality of his movement. In Pas/Parts 2016, he uses stylistic differences to enhance the counterpoint. "I'm trying to alternate between very symmetrical classical counterpoints and more amorphous counterpoints that flow," he says. Those differences are what creates visual rhythm, which in turn generates tension, and curiosity on the part of the viewer. "People are trying to predict what's happening," he explains. "If you can satisfy that, that's good; but you should also try to confound people a bit." The ballet's name suggests a series of parts, visible in the flow of solos, duets, trios, and mercurial groupings; the entire cast is onstage only in the finale. "What I like," Forsythe says, "is that first you think it's about a few people. Then they diminish as others take over, and then near the end another group takes over, people you didn't see at the beginning." Forsythe works fast, and his output is voluminous. "He can only choreograph really quickly; his brain works that fast," says Principal Dancer Frances Chung. "Trying to keep up with that for two weeks, six hours a day, was hard." Along with accommodating the pace, the dancers had to radically change things they'd memorized, and do so on the spot. In experimenting with movement for the new finale, for example, Forsythe called on one dancer to do her part in a duet — but alone, and double time, leaving out all the repeats and adding a cha-cha rhythm. "I have a solo that changed every time I worked with him on it," says Chung, laughing. "A lot." The choreographer encourages dancers to work in this collaborative way. "Don't be afraid to offer yourselves," he said during rehearsals. The electronic score by his longtime collaborator, Thom Willems, uses repeated musical phrases or rhythms "with not a lot of information that's structurally helpful," Forsythe says. So he asked the dancers to help him build the structure by adding pauses to a movement phrase, doing a phrase backward, or trying "not to stop in the most logical place." This collaboration gives the dancers a sense of ownership. "That's very important," Forsythe says. "That's what creates a performing community: 'These are your steps. They were made for you.'" PAS/PARTS 2016 2017 SEASON GUIDE SAN FRANCISCO BALLET 59

• Cover