Lyon Opera Ballet.(Dance review)

Lyon Opera Ballet Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, CA October 27, 2006

Every visit with the ballet company from France's second city brings its share of revelations. Again, this time, the Lyonnais did not disappoint when they imported dances, both borrowed and commissioned, by three prominent European women modernists who interpreted familiar classical music through radically contrasting sensibilities. They scored triumphs in every case.

Sharing the program were the world premiere of Sasha Waltz's Fantasie and the company premiere of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's 1992 Die Grosse Fuge, an astute coupling. Inspired by Beethoven's eponymous string quartet movement, De Keersmaeker both mirrors and illuminates the music's web of counterpoint and dense textures. The Belgian choreographer thrusts her eight black-clad dancers into a measured movement maelstrom, introducing and then developing thematic elements. The gestures of the reclining woman at the start yield to 20 minutes of squiggling, spiraling, kneeling, rolling, and recovering bodies, often congealing in unison. Even partial disrobings take place at choice moments in the score.

If De Keersmaeker remains a cool analyst, ...