PARIS — The choreographer William Forsythe is ubiquitous here this fall. He is the focus of this year’s Festival d’Automne, with five companies presenting his work around the city over three months, and the Paris Opera Ballet offered a Forsythe program over three weeks in September and October. The appetite for Mr. Forsythe’s work in Paris, and the crowds that have flocked to the shows, point to the anomaly in his reputation. In Europe, where he has spent his whole professional career, he is an artistic giant; in his native United States, he is regarded with far less reverence.
A program brought to Théâtre de la Ville by the ballet troupe Semperoper Dresden last week, as part of the autumn festival, shows two of his important early works, “Steptext” (1985) and “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” (1987). They bracket “Neue Suite,” a compilation of pas de deux from five pieces created from 1987 to 1999. Mr. Forsythe was intensely focused on ballet technique during this period (since about 2000, his work has moved in other, more contemporary directions), and these works show why he has had the most significant influence on the art form since Balanchine’s groundbreaking 20th-century extensions of classical form.
“Steptext” and “In the Middle” convey the way Mr. Forsythe took Balanchinian precept — the off-balance extensions of academic positions; an athletic, no-nonsense virtuosity; the focus on clarity and speed — and then pushed them all further. Every aspect of ballet convention is explored: What if movement is generated by a shoulder or knee rather than the center of the body? How does partnering work? What happens if conventional positions are extended? How far can an off-balance position go before a fall?
All these ideas, but most particularly an exploration of partnering, are offered in “Steptext,” a quartet for three men and a ballerina (she in lipstick-red body tights). The piece plays with ballet conventions: A dancer improvises onstage as the audience enters; the house lights stay on for a while after the work starts; the ravishing score, Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 (in a recording by Nathan Millstein), is frequently cut off at climactic points. The ballerina becomes a powerful rather than passive figure. She decides with whom she will dance and how, even as Mr. Forsythe makes it clear through complex, sweepingly beautiful sequences that partnership is exactly what is required.
Like many of Mr. Forsythe’s pieces, “Steptext” is partly about the work of ballet. We see the muscular tensions that classicism masks, the realignment of weight and balance, the difficulty and the extraordinary beauty. The ballerina in “Steptext” is an artist showing us her craft, the way she can expand and compress time in space. On Wednesday night, Courtney Richardson, partnered by Michael Tucker, Istvan Simon and Fabien Voranger (all wonderful), took the movement to its fullest extremes without exaggeration and with a moving delicacy and grace.
Created for the Paris Opera Ballet to a brooding electronic score by Thom Willems, “In the Middle” evokes the competitive world of the Parisian company. It was the work that established Mr. Forsythe as an international presence.
The Dresden dancers (particularly Elena Vostrotina in the central role, created on Sylvie Guillem, and Anna Merkulova) perfectly conjure the wary gazes turned upon one another, the prickly intimacy, the burning quest for center stage. Even when that is achieved, soloists are rarely alone. A figure often lurks on the edges of the stage; during one solo (Jiri Bubenicek, marvelous), the ensemble forms a frieze of academic positions across the back, like dancers at the barre or illustrations from a guide to ballet technique.
The relationship between the formal elements of that technique and the way it is extended and elaborated here is entirely understood by the Semperoper ensemble, which has benefited from frequent coaching by Mr. Forsythe and is directed by Aaron S. Watkin, who danced with Mr. Forsythe’s company. Although the pas de deux aren’t offered chronologically in “Neue Suite,” it’s possible to trace the evolution of Mr. Forsythe’s vocabulary across the dances; from the sexy athleticism of “New Sleep” to the tender, poignantly beautiful lyricism of “Slingerland” (an astounding Sangeun Lee and Raphaël Coumes-Marquet) and the slippery intricacies of “Berio” (taken from the 1998 “workwithinwork”). Throughout, the dancers inform the dancing with a musical sensibility and a physical refinement that does them, and the work, honor.