Where Classic Lines Meet Contemporary Pulse: SF Ballet’s Blake Works Was Architectural and Instinctive
San Francisco Ballet’s Blake Works opened with a minimal stage design behind a hand drawn showdrop of a dancer with all directions of movements, simple lines, precise, like a Leonardo di Vinci drawing--the Vitruvian Man--to a full-scale stage size. The curtain filled up the proscenium at the War Memorial, to be rolled to reveal something beyond the arcs--the anatomy of the muscles shown with lines and dotted lines, with technics and precision—the dynamics in music and movements evoking profound emotions from audience watching breathlessly in awe.
It's a three parts series of a striking collaboration between William Forsythe, an internationally acclaimed American choreographer, and James Blake, a Grammy winning English singer, songwriter, and producer. Forsythe reshaped classical ballet by taking apart its formal structure and rebuilding it with movement that feels expansive, contemporary, and deeply physical. Blake’s music carries a different kind of architecture — soulful vocals layered over spare electronic rhythms, weaving elements of dubstep and pop into something intimate and atmospheric.
In this striking program, William Forsythe bends the spine of classical ballet without breaking it. Rooted in rigorous technique, the dancers stretch into something freer, riskier —lengthening lines, tilting balances, pushing bodies just past symmetry while never abandoning technique. The foundation is pure ballet; the expression is freedom--elastic limbs carving space with both precision with daring fluidity.
Set to the haunting, intimate music of James Blake, the choreography feels like breath made visible. Masculine and feminine energies converse rather than collide — strength without rigidity, softness without fragility; A duet of forces, ecstatic and controlled at once.
When Prologue opened the night, I was immediately absorbed by the dancers’ energies that electrified the minimalist stage. When Blake’s Lindisfarne I filled the stage with voice and pulses, the dancers’ move intervened with the soundscape into a shared sense of structure where Forsythe played with phrasing and silence, allowing pauses to become as expressive as movement itself.
It was impossible to separate the two — the quiet mathematics of both ballet and music — as the music, the beat and the footsteps merged into an emotional display that was raw and evocative, a kind of yearning that filled the silence and space in between the beats. I did not expect the tension in stillness could be so breathtaking; it felt deeply moving, I was in tears.
The scores for The Barre Project draw from Blake’s Pieces such as “Lindisfarne I,” “200 Press,” “Retrograde,” “Lullaby for My Insomniac,” and “Buzzard & Kestrel”. Piano lines meet electronic pulses in intimate, rhythmic neo-soul and house textures. The music layers electronic beats over piano-driven melodies, giving the choreography a modern, almost club-like current that fuels its athletic speed and precision. Construct, de-construct, watching the dancers built the movements over the mechanics to the music felt like they were exploring the music and connecting to the sound and beat structurally, yet organically at the same time.
The stage remained minimalist, the male dancers in simple black, blue and grey leotard while the female dancers in short dresses above the thighs, simplest lines that best enhanced the body sculptures moving and gliding through the scores with rhythm, momentum, tension and dynamics. It felt architectural and
instinctive at once — tradition stretched into the present tense. SF Ballet’s Blake Works is one of the most memorable performances for me, striking, dynamic, yet intimately emotional.