William Forsythe (choreographer)

William Forsythe in 2012

William Forsythe (born December 30, 1949 in New York City)^[1] is an American dancer and choreographer resident in Frankfurt am Main in Hessen. He is known internationally for his work with the Ballet Frankfurt (1984–2004) and The Forsythe Company (2005–2015). Recognized for the integration of ballet and visual arts, which displayed both abstraction and forceful theatricality, his vision of choreography as an organizational practice has inspired him to produce numerous installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation, incorporating the spoken word {and} experimental music.^[2]

Early life

William Forsythe was born in New York in 1949, but only started dancing seriously in his later teenage years in college. He followed his grandfather musically as he was a violin prodigy. Forsythe played bassoon, violin, flute, and sang in choruses. He also choreographed for his high school's musicals.^[3] He began his training in Florida and later continued to dance with Joffrey Ballet.^[4] It was while attending college at Jacksonville University, that Forsythe began his formal training as a dancer with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long.^[5][6]

Life and career

William Forsythe began studying at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York in 1969^[2] and began his professional career as an apprentice with the Joffrey Ballet in 1971^[7][F]rom 1971 to 1973 danced with Joffrey Ballet II, often appearing in the parent company's productions.^[2] After this, he followed his then wife, Eileen Brady, joining the Stuttgart Ballet in 1973. Encouraged by the director, Marcia Haydée, Forsythe began choreographing works for the company and in 1976 he choreographed his first piece, Urlicht. He became the Stuttgart's resident choreographer in 1978 and that same year created his first piece for the company, Dream of Galilei.^[2] During the next seven years he created original works for the Stuttgart Ensemble, and for ballet companies in Munich, The Hague, London, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Paris, New York, and San Francisco. In 1979, Forsythe choreographed and created his first full length ballet called Orpheus.^[2] Forsythe left Stuttgart Ballet in 1980 to choreograph for other companies such as Munich State Opera Ballet, Netherlands Dance Theatre, the Frankfurt Ballet, and the Paris Opera Ballet.^[2] In 1984 he was appointed director of the government-sponsored Ballet Frankfurt.^[1] Forsythe choreographed what is now looked at as his most famous ballet known worldwide. The ballet was titled In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated and was commissioned by Rudolf Nureyev starring Sylvie Guillem.^[8] In 2002, however, the Frankfurt government began to withdraw its support in order to cut costs and to favor a more conventional dance company. The public protested, but Forsythe decided to move on, and in 2004 the Frankfurt Ballet gave its last performance.^[2] After the closure of Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, he founded the Forsythe Company (2005) with the support of the states of Saxony and Hesse, the cities of Dresden and Frankfurt am Main, and private sponsors.

The Forsythe Company, based in Dresden and Frankfurt am Main, was about half the size of the Frankfurt Ballet, but nearly all of its dancers were from that company. Forsythe continued to present his vision to a wide audience. With bases in Frankfurt and Dresden and supported by both state and private funding, the Forsythe Company made its debut in 2005 with the premiere of Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies. A major retrospective of Forsythe's work was presented at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2006, and in subsequent years, his company toured across Europe, appearing in Paris, Zürich, and London. In 2009 London held a monthlong "Focus on Forsythe" celebration that included events across the city, a traveling multimedia installation, and the performance of Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, an elaborate installation piece at the Tate Modern, in which dancers weaved through hundreds of suspended pendulums.^[2] The newer pieces choreographed by Forsythe are performed only by The Forsythe Company, yet many of his earlier pieces are performed by many ballet companies such as Mariinsky Ballet, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Semperoper Ballet Dresden, England's Royal Ballet, and the Paris Opera Ballet.^[6]

Throughout his career, Forsythe has experimented with a freer approach to choreography in which the dancers are allowed to make choices about order and timing comparable to those made by musicians playing a cadenza. As a training tool for dancers, he developed a CD-ROM entitled Improvisation Technologies (1995), which in turn resulted in the piece Self Meant to Govern, the first part of the evening-length work, Eidos: Telos (1995) which used monitors to provide dancers with verbal cues that spurred movement responses.^[9]

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, the Renaissance Society in Chicago,^[10] and other locations. Forsythe has been commissioned to produce architectural and performance installations by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind, ARTANGEL (London), Creative Time (New York), and the City of Paris. Forsythe is known to teach at universities and cultural institutions as a guest artist.^[6] He became one of the Dance Mentors for The Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative in 2002. Forsythe was also given honorary degrees such as his Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York City and was given the title Honorary Fellow at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London.^[6]

Awards received by Forsythe and his ensembles include the New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007) and London's Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, 2009). Forsythe has been conveyed the title of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999) by the government of France and has received the Hessische Kulturpreis/Hessian Culture Award (1995), the German Distinguished Service Cross (1997), the Wexner Prize (2002), the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (2010), Samuel H Scripps / American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Grand Prix de la SACD (2016).^[11]

In 2014, Forsythe announced he would join the University of Southern California's newly created Glorya Kaufman School of Dance as a professor in fall 2015, when its first Bachelor of Fine Arts dance majors would begin attending; he spends six to eight weeks a year at the university in Los Angeles.^[12] Forsythe is currently an artistic advisor at the university for the choreographic institute.^[6] Moreover, in 2015 The Forsythe Company was taken over by Jacopo Godani, an Italian dancer and choreographer, under a new name The Dresden Frankfurt Ballet Company.

Style

Forsythe believes that classical ballet is a language with rules to follow. However, although he is trained with these rules, he is much more interested in bending and eventually breaking these guidelines. His style is based on classical ballet, using traditional positions, but developing them to the extreme. Many of his pieces are danced on pointe, but he has used all kind of footwear including, work-boots, socks, and slippers, in order to explore different choreographic results. Forsythe's choreographic style is both postmodern and deconstructivist. Similarly to the style of other postmodernists, Forsythe plays with the unexpected, moments of improvisation, and places an emphasis on process within the creation of his works.^[13] The extreme positions involved in his ballets require a great deal of flexibility, in fact most of his dancers possess that skill.

Forsythe's early work in Stuttgart was created mostly for commission all of these early works were neoclassical. However, even in these early years, Forsythe states that he was criticized for creating work that was too modern. As his career progressed Forsythe shifted the focus to the methods of his working. These new focuses included space and dynamics. Forsythe's choreographic style often includes political themes, he believes that the rehearsal space is inherently political, because each individual lives their politics through there everyday behaviors. In an interview Forsythe said, " I wasn't about to go into politics, but I could perform a political experiment locally." ^[14] The movement style itself drew inspiration from the work of George Balanchine, Forsythe was drawn to the musicality, speed, and lightness of Balanchine's work. Forsythe's emphasis on space is evident in his big, long and exaggerated movements. Very fast footwork, and shaped hands- often with the lines broken at the wrists- are at the base of his vocabulary. The arms are intended to lead many of the movements within this technique, unlike the more classical teachings of moving the arms and legs simultaneously.^[15]

Weight change plays a major part in his work, this is especially evident in his partner-work. The dancers stretch and pull each other far from their center-lines, the idea behind this is that each will pull the other so far from center that a counterbalance is created between them. This contrasts the more classical partnering techniques that mainly focus on keeping the ballerina more upright and the goal is to assist in maintaining balance.^[15]

While Forsythe deconstructs the classical technique of ballet he additionally challenges social norms and the representation of these norms within art. For example, in his work, Behind the China Dogs, Albert Evans dances with lean and fluid movements- qualities typically viewed as feminine, as Helene Alexopaulos moves fiercely, and with muscular movements -qualities typically viewed as "masculine". In all of his work, the dancers are prompted to reach their limbs past their kinespheres, stretching the arms and legs away from the torso.^[13]

On the structure point of view, he likes to play with the typical expectations of the audience when watching a performance. In the second act of Artifact (1984), for example, he raises and lowers the curtains in the middle of the dance, in order to change drastically the environment on stage, and willingly lights the dancers "improperly."^[16]

Most of his pieces use electronic scores composed by Thom Willems. Forsythe and Willems both believe that music and dance are independent from each other, and even though they coincide in dynamics and length, none of the two is there to illustrate the other. Their main concern is the inner structure of their works, so to leave the emotional interpretation to the audience or the listener.^[17]

Selected works

Dance and visual arts

William Forsythe is also known for his work in combining the choreographic and visual arts. He creates "Choreographic Objects", which are architectural and performance installations. He was commissioned to create these works by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind. These works and many of his work in film have been displayed in a multitude of museums as well as exhibits throughout his time of creating.^[6]

Forsythe collaborated with different educators and media specialists in order to create new ways to document dance. His first online program was a computer application titled, Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, which he created in 1994. This application was used by professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, postgraduate architecture programs, and secondary schools throughout the world, and it was the inspiration for his later application: Synchronous Objects. Synchronous Objects was launched in 2009 and was created and "One Flat Thing" was reproduced on a digital online score was developed by The Ohio State University. The process was revealed, and people began to discover that the choreographic scores, and principles of choreography can be applied to other fields. After the success of Synchronous Objects came Forsythe's Motion Bank. Motion Bank is a research platform with a focus on creating and researching online digital scores in collaboration with guest choreographers.^[6]

Awards

• "Bessie" Award (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007)
• Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, 2009)
• Government of France-Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999)
• Service Cross-Germany (1997)
• Wexner Prize (2002)
• Deutscher Tanzpreis (2004)
• Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement-Venice (2010)

References

External links

• The Forsythe Company
• http://www.williamforsythe.de/