‘Undertainment’, the new-look lambada and a grungy chorus line: bold dance at Lyon Biennale

<p>The festival delivers a fantastic new work by William Forsythe, pure class from François Chaignaud and a Jan Martens revival that exasperates and enlivens</p><p>William Forsythe’s new piece Undertainment, for <a href="https://www.dfdc.de/en">Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company</a>, is fiendishly fascinating. Rhythmic gasps and hoots from the dancers build a sonic matrix in which the work unfolds. There’s a physical matrix too, the ensemble forming lines, circles and grids from which solos, duets and trios emerge. It’s as if air itself had become a 3D maze, the dancers wriggling through its pathways without touching the sides, or each other. The feel is studious, both in the dancers’ rehearsal-studio attire and in the compositional exactitude. On the almost empty soundtrack, an occasional lo-fi hum will swell and subside. It’s layered and limpid, as subtle as it is incisive: Forsythe choreographs not only the stage, but also our attention.</p><p>Undertainment was one of the most anticipated pieces at the 2025 <a href="https://www.labiennaledelyon.com/en">Lyon Dance Biennale</a>, where Ioannis Mandafounis’s Lisa similarly set up clear structures within which the dancers improvise. This work, too, feels alert and alive. Yet where Forsythe is spare, Mandafounis is profuse: 1930s costumes, an onstage pianist (Gabriele Carcano) playing swirls of Fauré, poetry by Osip Mandelstam voiced in several languages, a tumble of turbulent dancing that echoes the piano’s splashing sonorities and feels full of ungraspably fleeting stories. Mandafounis’s method is generative, and the dancers are breathtaking in it; yet sometimes you feel a good edit might give the material more shape.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/oct/01/dance-lyon-biennale-undertainment-william-forsythe-francois-chaignaud">Continue reading...</a>