A body straightens, a movement slips out of its familiar trajectory: in ballet, even a shifted axis can alter an aesthetic order. The avant-garde needs neither a new story nor a spectacular set to achieve this. It can begin within technique itself, where posture, balance and tempo seem a given.
This is the starting point for the double bill “Forsythe / Eyal”, which Ballett am Rhein presents at the Opernhaus Düsseldorf on 30 October. William Forsythe’s “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” meets Sharon Eyal’s “Strong”, created with her artistic partner Gai Behar. Two works, two generations, one shared question: what can be drawn from the trained ballet body when its familiar certainties no longer hold?
Classicism Becomes a Testing Ground
Forsythe’s piece received its world premiere on 30 May 1987, performed by the Paris Opera Ballet at the Palais Garnier. It is not, then, a new choreography that is now coming to Düsseldorf. That very distance makes the evening interesting: what was once an intervention in the language of ballet can now also be passed on as repertoire.
Forsythe himself has described the work as a rigorously structured sequence of theme and variations. Academic virtuosity remains his material. He extends and accelerates inherited figures, shifts their orientation and places accents differently. Classicism is not abolished, but reworked until it can seem alien to its own origins. The distinction is crucial: it is not a lack of control that destabilises the form, but a different organisation of the same abilities.
Alongside this is Thom Willems’s electronic music. Rather than a narrative score, it provides a sonic counterpart to the movement. The sets, costumes and lighting are also by Forsythe. In Düsseldorf, Tanja Rühl is responsible for adapting the staging and lighting, while Thierry Guiderdoni rehearses the choreography. Such tasks are no minor matter: a work must travel with the knowledge of how to make its deviations precise.
The Group Electrified
“Strong” received its world premiere on 8 December 2019, created for the Staatsballett Berlin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Sharon Eyal comes from the Batsheva Dance Company; she has worked with Gai Behar since 2005. He is co-choreographer of “Strong”, and both are responsible for the set. Rebecca Hytting designed the costumes, Alon Cohen the lighting.
According to the Düsseldorf venue’s description, the piece works with recurring movement structures and electronic music by Ori Lichtik. Its connection to club culture is therefore more than a fashionable veneer. Repetition and pulse offer another way of holding an ensemble together: less as a collection of individual displays of brilliance than as a collectively organised energy.
This can be seen as a countermodel to Forsythe’s reworking of classical figures. Where orientation and acceleration transform the familiar vocabulary in his work, here the relationship between the individual body and the group takes centre stage. Aram Hasler rehearses “Strong” with Ballett am Rhein. Only the performance will reveal how the company embodies these different demands.
An Avant-Garde with a Memory
The double bill is therefore also an occasion to consider the term avant-garde more closely. What is new in Düsseldorf is the pairing, not the works themselves. That does not automatically rob them of their friction. A break with convention can survive in the repertoire — provided that not only the steps but also their underlying principles are passed on.
As a programming statement, “Forsythe / Eyal” reveals two paths: ballet can be rebuilt from within or confronted with other rhythmic and physical orders. Precision is not the enemy of a new departure. It is its tool.
Original reviewed by the editors · 29 October 2026
