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Welsh’s Falling to Wolfgang Amadeus’ wonderful music is a facile piece, excellent as an opener or a closer; apparently it's a pleasure for the dancers to execute, enabling the audience to appraise the technique and delivery of the company’s dancers . I was told by one of the dancers that Welsh worked rapidly and easily. His ballet vocabulary is commendable; it also provided a chance for three diverse principals (Vanessa Zahorian, Yuan Yuan Tan and Katita Waldo) to sparkle in their individual ways. Maureen Choi, provided unexpected prominence, rendered her assignment ably. After several programs without him, Gennadi Nedviguine was back with his pliant jump, and elegant Slavic- trained deportment. Garrett Anderson, David Arce, Rory Hohenstein and James Sofranko gathered round him, all able dancers.

Rubies followed the first intermission; Vanessa Zahorian and Gonzalo Garcia gave us Balanchine's take on semi-Broadway razz ma tazz with characteristic fluidity accented by touches of sass every so often. Elana Altman submitted to the efforts of Jaime Garcia Castillo, Martyn Garside, Jonathan Mangosing and Garen Scribner to move her in suitable disjointed puppet fashion.
 

Following a pause we watched Muriel Maffre essay the sounds of The Hayward Fault, augmented by Randall Parker’s music triggered by the same phenomenon. The ballet resulted from an exchange between Ken Goldberg of U.C. Berkeley’s faculty and Maffre. Maffre piqued the interest of Yuri Possokhov. With a beautiful, transparent dress and earth-toned set by Benjamin Pierce and lighting by Kevin Connaughton, Maffre followed the rumble and churning of the Fault’s movements combined with Parker’s melange of other natural phenomenon. A hard piece to evaluate in overall dance worth, Possokhov and Maffre created images of struggle, chaos and ultimate resignation rendered with characteristic Maffre intensity and focus. Mori could be performed as a memorial and an anti-war statement, Maffre the fated figure of the lone survivor. Clearly, Maffre was the prime mover in the realization.

After the second intermission the full Artifact Suite received its American premiere. Forsythe was responsible for design and lighting as well as the choreography. The first half employed some J.S. Bach transcendent music, periodically interrupted by the abrupt descent of the Opera House fire screen. Forsythe used the corps as moving echoes to the semiphore-like gestures Elana Altman, back usually to the audience. Muriel Maffre/Pierre-Francois Vilanoba and Lorena Feijoo/ Pascal Molat rendered their assignments together; the first with contained intensity, the latter with passionate accents. The two couples were a rewarding contrast; one wished for no interruptions. Gradually, Forsythe encased them in the language of the semiphores; one was made aware no one escapes the pull of the destiny figure Altman represents. After a pause, the second half started to music by Eva Crossman-Hecht. The stage was further enveloped in shadow; in the rush and push of the obscured figures, I was grateful a chest cold required me leaving the theater.
 

Ballet mistress Betsy Erickson had informed Howard Sayette, who mounts Eugene Loring and Bronislava Nijinska ballets here and abroad, and me during the intermission Forsythe’s contract stipulated Artifact be performed as a final piece. As an essay on the depressing aspects of society one sees why; there is little evidence of humanity. I also had been told in the press room by one of the area’s dance critics that “Bill owed Helgi another ballet.” If Artifact is that fulfillment, one hopes the debt has been retired, but good.