Forsythe/Peck, The Barre Project

The Barre Project is a genuinely exciting work for many reasons. It is choreographed by William Forsythe, who over the past four decades has created highly technical, demanding and boundary-pushing dances for companies in Europe and the US, including his own company, which wound up in 2015. Forsythe's Playlist (Track 1, 2). created especially for the men of English National Ballet, had Sadler's Wells audiences whooping with the thrill of it all.

New York City Ballet principal Tiler Peck is an extraordinary ballerina, for whom technique, classical or contemporary, holds no secrets, no fears. If you've watched any of NYCB's streamed programmes during lockdown, you'll know just how alive, intelligent and transporting her dancing is. And indeed, how the music streams through her body as if both were inseparable. In The Barre Project she is joined by three distinguished male dancers, Lex Ishimoto, Brooklyn Mack and Roman Mejia.

The Barre Project is set to the music of the popular singer/songwriter James Blake, Blake Works II, the second such collaboration with Forsythe.

And the whole thing is filmed by CLI Studios, billed as the world’s top online arts education platform, which is widely experienced in filming dance performances as well as classes.

Here's a very brief taster:

Created entirely over Zoom last summer, The Barre Project consists of half an hour of classical choreography: five musical episodes centred on the barre, the indispensable feature of every dancer's daily class. In fact, the project started as Forsythe's tribute to class teachers everywhere, who put dancers through their steps every morning of their lives.

As it developed, it became in Forsythe words, a celebration of 'a dancer’s irrepressible capacity to summon fierce joy through their work [which] gives testament to the resilience of the human spirit.'

The Barre Project is without a doubt one of the few silver linings of the Covid lockdown. We just can't wait to see it (again, and again, and again…)