William Forsythe at La Scala

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In Milan, The Blake Works tests both company and audience with its austere logic of movement, revealing skill while withholding warmth and emotional payoff

by Alessandro BIZZOTTO

 It almost feels sacrilegious to withhold instant veneration from William Forsythe. But at Teatro alla Scala, in the William Forsythe Evening, The Blake Works unfolds as architecture in motion rather than spectacle, demanding a recalibrated gaze rather than awe. The collision between post‑classical movement and contemporary sound – fragmented, unsettling – remains challenging. Yet here, it finds a distilled coherence: a choreography reined in, sharpened, capable of twisting familiar ballet grammar into something at once austere and alive.

The evening begins with Prologue, a skeletal invocation in which dancers inhabit space like breath hallucinating geometry. Lines stretch, contract, pause; silence becomes weight, bodies become architecture. There is no romanticism, no flourish – only tension, leverage, the body contorting itself into new angles. The effect is visceral, demanding: not a surrender to beauty, but an engagement with form as an instrument of disruption. Yet dancer Francesco Mascia seems able to bring an honest passion to the piece.