Ahead of their performances at Birmingham Hippodrome as part of IDFB 2012, Royal Ballet Flanders’ performances of William Forsythe’s iconic work, Artifact, at Sadler’s Wells have received stunning reviews.
In today’s Observer, Luke Jennings describes a “sublimely moving performance…one we will not forget“. He also highlights the worrying plight of Royal Ballet Flanders, after political interference has left the company with an uncertain future, as “the company is unlikely to survive [Royal Ballet Flanders' Director] Kathryn Bennetts’s departure in anything like its present form“, meaning this could be the last time the company performs Artifact.
Sarah Crompton and Judith Mackrell both gave the show five stars on Friday. Writing in the Telegraph, Crompton described this “lovingly and sleekly staged revival” of Artifact as “glorious and challenging in the same moment, it raises the spirits just as much as it taxes the brain. It is almost as if dance has broken free of the past and is whirring into the future“.
In the Guardian, Mackrell praised both Forsythe as “a master of ensemble, his choreography referencing a history of dance styles and a compendium of poetic imagery” and the company, adding “there’s joy and heroism in the enterprise, and the Flanders dancers perform it with rare passion and discipline. They honour the ballet and Bennetts, their retiring director“.
