BEIRUT: Teetering on tip-toe, leaping through the air and swooning in stylized distress – classical ballet is a preternaturally graceful art form.

But, as Darren Aronofsky’s film “Black Swan” so ably demonstrates, there is something perhaps horrifying about ballet as well – the propensity for injury, the constant pain, the psychological strain.

As well as fleeting references to ballet positions – arms held in third position, feet curved into chisel-sharp points, expansive leaps with scissoring legs – there were moments at which the body seemed to give out. A thigh muscle collapsed, the hips skewed, the back buckled and the dancer ended a crumpled heap on the floor.

Thursday’s double bill comprised “N.N.N.N” and “The Vile Parody of Address” (Forsythe does a nice line in opaque titles). Both works are from the back catalogue of The Forsythe Company, the dance troupe formed when Forsythe quit his 20-year-long superintendence of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2004.

One of the giants of contemporary dance, often credited as shaping the direction of modern ballet, American-born Forsythe has spent the lion’s share of his career in Germany. The Forsythe Company is based between Frankfurt and Dresden and it was courtesy of the Goethe Institut that his creations appeared in Beirut Thursday.

The doyen himself was absent – apparently he’s hard at work on new creations – but a team of five dancers (Cyril Baldy, Amancio Gonzalez, Tilman O’Donnell, Jone San Martin and Ander Zabala) energetically retraced his steps for a capacity crowd at Masrah al-Madina.

Watching Forsythe’s work can be reminiscent of looking through a kaleidoscope. His sequences of movement transform in tone and aesthetic quality with dizzying rapidity. A gravity-defying leap morphs into an ungainly waddle, which in turn segues into a ballroom-inspired shimmy. It’s as though Forsythe is determined to chart every possible variation of bodily movement.

“N.N.N.N” seemed to be an exploration of momentum. Four male dancers blundered into each other and ricocheted off, enacting incredibly complex series of interactions in the manner of an infernal human pinball machine.

Accompanied by heavy, rhythmic breathing sounds and grunts, they found themselves in increasingly madcap formations. Occasionally, when events reached a peak, the dancers would freeze for a moment before one swung his arm once, twice, thrice, cranking the whole edifice into gear again.

Wearing resolutely humdrum clothes – the kind of thing you’d throw on before cleaning the bathroom – the dancers maintained deadpan faces, barely making eye contact. Nonetheless, there were moments of humor. The confluence of guttural sounds and hyperactive movement at times verged on slapstick.

“The Vile Parody of Address” was accompanied by Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Fugue no. 22 in B-flat minor,” as interpreted by Glenn Gould. A series of interlinked solos, there was a continual fluctuation between awkwardness and grace.

A dancer tripped himself over with his leg, tumbled backwards and regained his balance by windmilling his arms, suddenly grandly imposing. His colleague crumpled onto the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West before springing into a vigorous sequence of calisthenics.

Forsythe is as comfortable in the gallery as on the stage – he has created installations for the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work shares the conceptual nature of much contemporary art but it can be uncommunicative.

Many critics and, it turns out, a number of Thursday’s audience members, struggle to find an emotional core within Forsythe’s work. Nonetheless, his exacting choreography, continually pushing the boundaries of the body and its capacity to express, is rarely less than exhilarating.

BIPOD continues on April 16 with a performance from the Linga dance company at Masrah al-Madina. For more information, call Maqamat on 01-343-834.