It seems I only find time to write when I travel. I’m in Germany to see new choreography and to meet with a set designer. A blizzard in Copenhagen forced a missed flight connection.  I find myself sitting at the counter in an airport café in Frankfurt, ordering coffee and a croissant. I bravely order in German, earning a sympathetic response from my server in English. At least she didn’t point me to the nearby Starbucks. The man next to me orders a large beer and a vodka. It’s 6am.

I spent one week in Frankfurt in 1988 visiting William Forsythe and friends in the Ballett Frankfurt. Bill has remained generous and encouraging since I first met him in New York. He has been in my thoughts over the past few weeks as we have prepared and performed One Flat Thing, reproduced. We conclude our eight performances of the work this week to mixed reviews. It returns in eight months for a second look. Initially apprehensive about re-programming the work so soon, I’m now glad I did, Those that hate it may not give it a second chance, but I wish they would.

The piece is unlike anything I’ve seen before on a ballet stage. It floats from assaulting and aggravating to stunning and electrifying. I’ve now watched it half a dozen times and the shock is gone. The traditional structures of composition, design and even classical ballet emerge. I find moments of symmetry and balanced asymmetry, repetition and unison. The effect of chaos is meticulously calculated. Order dominates disorder: twenty identical aluminum tables, equally spaced, imprint structure on flying limbs and a cacophonous score. The artist’s canvas is replaced with graph paper, and Jackson Pollock is battling Piet Mondrian for design. (Mondrian wins.)

The work intrigues and reaches fruition in the mind of the viewer. The 17-minute performance is only the beginning. We are asked to process the work and discuss it. We recognize it as an extension of Forsythe’s to reinvent and challenge. He is a link in a vital chain of innovators that includes Marius Petipa and George Balanchine. Each extends the vocabulary of dance and challenges the preconceived notions of ballet. What I find remarkable about OFTR is how many traditions of ballet are observed. Ballets should be contained in the assumed parameters of a stage. The majority of dancers fill the upstage space, while featured dancers come downstage in smaller numbers. To end a work as it began is a typical and reassuring structure for an audience. Think of Agon, Polyphonia and Für Alina. Dancers consistently work as an interdependent team. And yet, with many traditions of ballet observed, the mold is broken.

The most pronounced violation is of our expectations of our experience at the ballet. We readily accept beauty, energy, entertainment and even tragedy at the ballet. Emotions are acceptable, especially if we can transfer them to a character, real or abstract. OFTR offers a look at humanity. That’s us we’re looking at, and we look angry, even violent, sometimes bored and rather futile. We are obsessively task-oriented, with no real evidence of accomplishment. Yikes. Do we come to the ballet to be lifted above our everyday lives or witness the sorrows and trials of characters safely removed from ourselves? Forsythe’s troubling assessment of humanity in the 21st century is not what I paid 52 bucks for. This is precisely where the clever mind of this artist succeeds once again in pushing the envelope. Our understanding of ballet is challenged and changed and, in some small way, so is our world.