Last Night's Dream

Punctuation. Fast garbled sentences and exclamation points, then comma, comma, semicolon, full ... STOP. Contrasts of noise and movement and then the absolute. Quiet and stillness. Dancers who can, all of them at once, stop on a dime together. And when they "run," they RUN! Fast! Faster than most modern dance people even think of moving. And then, without scripted directions or a musical mark, they STOP. Full stop. I was never so aware of punctuations, never so content to let the murmurings and whispers and unintelligible shoutings and screamings go to the recesses of my mind.

Three Atmospheric Studies is very theatre, quite minimal on pure dance except for the first segment, and visually stunning as only Forsythe can do. What eyes he has. What a vision: the angles and intersections, and the dancers knowing their corners and facings, all so right and perfect and executed with clarity. The punctuation of physical geometry. And then the colors--khaki and drab and primary Crayola colorbox--and the lights--sterile interrogative fluorescents and the soothing ellipses (a low natural stage glow) into the beginning of each Part. This was the dream of last night.