WILLIAM FORSYTHE
William Forsythe (*1949, New York) has been active in the field of choreography for over 50 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st century art form. Forsythe’s deep interest in the fundamental principles of organization of choreography has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.
Biography
Raised in New York and initially trained in Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, he created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and other ballet companies worldwide. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt, where he created works such as Artifact(1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), Eidos:Telos (1995), Kammer/Kammer (2000) and Decreation (2003).
After the closure of the Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, Forsythe established a new, more independent ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he directed from 2005 to 2015. Works produced by this ensemble include Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), Human Writes (2005), Heterotopia (2006), I don’t believe in outer space (2008) and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s works developed during this time were performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces are prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major ballet company in the world. More recently Forsythe has created original works for the Paris Opera Ballet, English National Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, La Scala Ballet Company, as well as A Quiet Evening of Dance produced by Sadler’s Wells Theatre (London) and The Barre Project (Blake Works II) created for the digital stage.
Forsythe has been commissioned to produce architectural and performance installations by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind (Groningen, 1989), ARTANGEL (London,1997), Creative Time (New York, 2005), and the SKD – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013, 2014). These Choreographic Objects, as Forsythe calls his installations, include among others White Bouncy Castle (1997), City of Abstracts (2000), Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2 (2013), Black Flags (2014), Underall (2017) and Unsustainables (2019). His installation and film works have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997), Louvre Museum (2006), Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006), Tate Modern (London, 2009), MoMA (New York 2010), Venice Biennale (2005, 2009, 2012, 2014), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt, 2015), 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016), ICA Boston (2011, 2018), Museum Folkwang (2019), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020) and Kunsthaus Zürich 2021.
In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and education. Core elements of his CD-ROM Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, developed with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and first published in 1999, are now accessible online (http://www.improvisation-technologies.zkm.de).
In 2002, Forsythe was chosen as the founding Dance Mentor for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York.
William Forsythe (*1949, New York) has been active in the field of choreography for over 50 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st century art form. Forsythe’s deep interest in the fundamental principles of organization of choreography has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.
Biography
Raised in New York and initially trained in Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, he created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and other ballet companies worldwide. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt, where he created works such as Artifact(1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), Eidos:Telos (1995), Kammer/Kammer (2000) and Decreation (2003).
After the closure of the Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, Forsythe established a new, more independent ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he directed from 2005 to 2015. Works produced by this ensemble include Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), Human Writes (2005), Heterotopia (2006), I don’t believe in outer space (2008) and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s works developed during this time were performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces are prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major ballet company in the world. More recently Forsythe has created original works for the Paris Opera Ballet, English National Ballet, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, La Scala Ballet Company, as well as A Quiet Evening of Dance produced by Sadler’s Wells Theatre (London) and The Barre Project (Blake Works II) created for the digital stage.
Forsythe has been commissioned to produce architectural and performance installations by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind (Groningen, 1989), ARTANGEL (London,1997), Creative Time (New York, 2005), and the SKD – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013, 2014). These Choreographic Objects, as Forsythe calls his installations, include among others White Bouncy Castle (1997), City of Abstracts (2000), Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2 (2013), Black Flags (2014), Underall (2017) and Unsustainables (2019). His installation and film works have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997), Louvre Museum (2006), Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006), Tate Modern (London, 2009), MoMA (New York 2010), Venice Biennale (2005, 2009, 2012, 2014), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt, 2015), 20th Biennale of Sydney (2016), ICA Boston (2011, 2018), Museum Folkwang (2019), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020) and Kunsthaus Zürich 2021.
In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and education. Core elements of his CD-ROM Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, developed with the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and first published in 1999, are now accessible online (http://www.improvisation-technologies.zkm.de).
In 2002, Forsythe was chosen as the founding Dance Mentor for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York.