Kirov Ballet.

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC June 13-15, 2006

If Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man existed in three dimensions--standing naked in a sphere but with his limbs inscribing wild, swooping arcs--he might begin to convey some of the complexity of dancers' bodies performing William Forsythe's work. The Kirov Ballet gave us leisure to contemplate the choreographer's sharpening of the physics of ballet technique into a pointed spear of virtuosity and wit, here wielded by dancers with preternaturally open bodies and an aggressive clarity of technique.

Forsythe's ballets, stripped of classical, historical associations and refined to a tool for the investigation of physics or philosophy, become interrogative rather than declarative--what are pointe shoes but a useful pivot point, or instruments to smack and slide across the floor? What is all of this dancing for, exactly? Though the Kirov dancers expertly presented Forsythe's questions, they only intermittently appeared to be pondering them for themselves.

In Steptext (1985), Daria Pavlenko, her unitard like a slash of red paint against the canvas of three black-clad men (led by Igor Kolb), prowled through the shredded soundscape of silence mixed with truncated bits of a Bach violin partita. All four flung themselves convincingly into the complex, interwoven partnering, with spiraling torsos and slicing limbs, only to leave off dancing without warning and stroll sullenly about the stage or into the wings.

In the first of four fast, rich, and dense pas de deux in Approximate Sonata (1996), Elena Sheshina thrust one foot forward in a forced arch, a tilt of her head transforming her body into a prehensile question--a motif that recurred throughout the work.

The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude (1996), adorned by the Kirov's bright smiles, airy cabrioles, and dizzying speed, felt like a letter written once in a classical form but then revised with a fierce, almost biting sensibility and relentless momentum. Closing the program, In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated (1987) continued the momentum, but so relentlessly that it began to feel repetitive despite some gorgeous moments--women's legs spinning like ribbons, feet flickering, the men brandishing them like weapons, all nine dancers reveling in their own virtuosity.

The Kirov dancers' endless legs, six-o'clock extensions, and precision can at first obscure the fact that Forsythe's movement is not their natural habitat, and that now and then they skimmed too lightly through weight shifts that should have been low and dug-in, or performed on the surface that which should have come from the core. What they might do with work Forsythe had created on them from the start, however, is thrilling to contemplate. See www.mariinsky.ru/en.