William Forsythe (choreographer)

This article is about the choreographer. For the actor, see William Forsythe (actor).

William Forsythe (born December 30, 1949 in New York City) is an American dancer and choreographer resident in Frankfurt am Main in Hessen. He is known internationally for his work with the Ballett Frankfurt (1984–2004) and The Forsythe Company (2005–present). His early dance works are acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st-century art form, while his more recent works have further extended his research on the performative potentials of dance and his investigation of choreography as a fundamental principle of organization.

Career

Forsythe was born in Manhasset, New York on December 30, 1949 and was a fan of Fred Astaire in his youth. He danced in high school and socially, choreographing for musicals and winning contests in the Mashed Potato. He received his first formal dance training at Jacksonville University, Florida, where he studied classical ballet and modern dance. He credits his early teachers in Florida as especially influential: Nolan Dingman, an early company member under George Balanchine, Christa Long, who told him that he was a choreographer, and a Mme. Boscovich, whom he claims first taught him to dance backward. Forsythe later trained at the school of the Joffrey Ballet under scholarship, as well as at the School of American Ballet in New York City and in additional classes with Maggie Black, Finis Jung, Jonathan Watts, Meredith Baylis, William Griffith, Leon Danelian, Mme. Peryaslavec, and Pat Wilde. He briefly joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1971, and was invited by John Cranko to join the Stuttgart Ballet three years later. He produced his first choreography for the Stuttgart Ballet in 1976 as part of a young choreographer's showcase and was subsequently named Resident Choreographer of the ensemble. He held this position until 1981, when he left the Stuttgart company to pursue a career as a freelance choreographer. During these years, he created works for ballet companies in Munich, The Hague, London, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Paris, New York and San Francisco.

In 1983, Forsythe choreographed Gänge, a controversial work subtitled "A piece about ballet," for the Frankfurt State Theater. In spite of the scandalous reception to this work, the Frankfurt theater offered him the position of Ballet Director in 1984. Forsythe directed the Frankfurt Ballet (Ballett Frankfurt) from 1984 until 2004, choreographing such seminal pieces such as Artifact (1984), Die Befragung des Robert Scott (1986) Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), ALIE/N A(C)TION (1992), Eidos : Telos (1995), Endless House (1999), Kammer/ Kammer (2000), and Decreation (2003). After the closure of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2004, Forsythe established The Forsythe Company with the support of the states of Saxony and Hesse, the cities of Dresden and Frankfurt am Main, and private sponsors in a public-private co-operative venture. The Forsythe Company is based at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt am Main and the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden and also maintains an extensive international touring schedule. Important works created for The Forsythe Company include Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), Human Writes (2005), Heterotopia (2006), and Yes we can't (2008).

In addition, Forsythe has produced and collaborated on numerous installation works, including White Bouncy Castle (1997, in collaboration with Dana Caspersen and Joel Ryan), City of Abstracts (2000), Scattered Crowd (2002), airdrawing|whenever on on on nohow on (2004, collaborating with Peter Welz), and You made me a monster (2005). Installation works by Forsythe have been shown at the Louvre Museum, Venice Biennale, Artangel in London, Creative Time in New York, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, and other prominent locations. His short film Solo was presented at the 1997 Whitney Biennial. In 2006, a major exhibition of his performance, film and installation work was presented at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Forsythe's dance works have been performed by, among others: The Kirov Ballet; The New York City Ballet; The San Francisco Ballet; The National Ballet of Canada; The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden; The Paris Opera Ballet; The Joffrey Ballet; The Bolshoi Ballet; and The Royal Ballet of Flanders.

Dance Education

In 1994, Forsythe authored a pioneering and award-winning computer application Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye which is used by professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, postgraduate architecture programs and secondary schools. 2009 marked the launch of Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing,reproduced, an interactive web project developed in collaboration with The Ohio State University which offers extensive interdisciplinary insight into the complex structures of choreographic thinking. Motion Bank, a new four-year project of The Forsythe Company, launched in late 2010. Providing a broad context for research into choreographic practice, the project's main focus is on the creation and publication of on-line digital scores in collaboration with guest choreographers.

As an educator, Forsythe is regularly invited to lecture and give workshops at major universities and cultural institutions internationally. He served as the first Mentor in Dance in the inaugural cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative and currently co-directs and teaches in the Dance Apprentice Network Across Europe (D.A.N.C.E.) program. Forsythe has been awarded an honorary fellowship from the Laban Centre in London and an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School.

Selected works

1976 Urlicht 1983 Gänge 1983 France/Dance 1984 Artifact 1986 Isabelle's Dance 1986 Die Befragung des Robert Scott 1987 In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated 1988 Impressing the Czar 1990 Limb's Theorem 1991 The Second Detail 1991 Loss of Small Detail 1992 ALIE/N A(C)TION 1994 Self Meant to Govern

1995 Eidos:Telos 1996 The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude 1999 Endless House 2000 One Flat Thing, reproduced 2000 Kammer/Kammer 2003 Decreation 2005 Three Atmospheric Studies 2005 You made me a monster 2006 Heterotopia 2007 The Defenders 2008 Yes we can't 2008 I Don't Believe in Outer Space 2009 The Returns

Awards

Forsythe has been chosen as Choreographer Of The Year several times by international critics’ surveys. Forsythe’s choreography and his companies’ performances have won:

• The Bessies (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007)
• Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999)
• Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999)
• Federal Cross of Merit First Class (1997)
• Prix Benois de la Danse (2002)
• the Wexner Prize (2002)
• Nijinsky Award (2002)
• Dance Magazine Award (2003)
• Nijinsky Award in the category Best Play for "Decreation" (2004)
• German Theater Prize (Faust-Theaterpreis: Best Choreography for "Yes we can’t") (2008)

External links

• The Forsythe Company
• “Yes we can’t” by William Forsythe, a podcast from ar2com (architecture to communications), which links ballet and architecture
• William Forsythe: 50 Choreographers of Contemporary Dance. Goethe-Instituts Website
• Ballet Magazine interview with William Forsythe
• Nederlands Dans Theater Biography on William Forsythe
• "I can dance again", Sylvia Staude interviews Frankfurt-based choreographer William Forsythe, Sign and Sight dated 21 April 2005 accessed 22 June 2007
• William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography: It Starts From Any Point (Steven Spier, ed., Routledge, forthcoming February 2011)
• Choreography by William Forsythe on Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive accessed 16 July 2011