William Forsythe (dancer)
Encyclopedia
William Forsythe is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 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
The Forsythe Company
The Forsythe Company is a dance ensemble of eighteen dancers based in Dresden, Germany. It was founded in 2005 by William Forsythe following the closure of the Frankfurt Ballet...

 (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, born in Manhasset, Long Island, in 1949, was a great fan of Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...

 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
Jacksonville University
Jacksonville University is a private university in Jacksonville, Florida, on the banks of the St. Johns River. The school was founded in 1934 as a two year college and was known as Jacksonville Junior College until 1958, when it shifted its focus to four-year university degrees and adopted its...

, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, 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
Joffrey Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet is a dance company in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1956. From 1995 to 2004, the company was known as The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. The company regularly performs classical ballets including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, while balancing those classics with pioneering modern...

 under scholarship, as well as at the School of American Ballet
School of American Ballet
The School of American Ballet is one of the most famous classical ballet schools in the world and is the associate school of the New York City Ballet, a leading international ballet company based at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. The school trains students from the...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 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
Joffrey Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet is a dance company in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1956. From 1995 to 2004, the company was known as The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. The company regularly performs classical ballets including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, while balancing those classics with pioneering modern...

 in 1971, and was invited by John Cranko to join the Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart Ballet
Stuttgart Ballet was the first major German ballet company. It rose to fame in the 1960s under Artistic Director John Cranko. The company, which is renowned for presentations of full-length narrative ballets including Romeo and Juliet, Eugene Onegin, The Taming of the Shrew, John Neumeier's Die...

 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
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

, The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, Frankfurt am Main, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 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
Impressing the Czar
Impressing the Czar is an award-winning ballet choreographed by William Forsythe with music by Thom Willems, Leslie Stuck, Eva Crossman-Hecht, and Ludwig van Beethoven...

 (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
The Forsythe Company
The Forsythe Company is a dance ensemble of eighteen dancers based in Dresden, Germany. It was founded in 2005 by William Forsythe following the closure of the Frankfurt Ballet...

 with the support of the states of Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

 and Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

, the cities of Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 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
Artangel
Artangel is a London-based arts organisation founded in 1985 by Roger Took. Directed since 1991 by James Lingwood and Michael Morris, it has commissioned and produced a string of notable site-specific works, plus several projects for TV, film, radio and the web...

 in London, Creative Time
Creative Time
Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1973 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged works in the public realm, especially in vacant spaces of historical and architectural interest...

 in New York, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, and other prominent locations. His short film Solo was presented at the 1997 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...

. 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
Mariinsky Ballet
The Mariinsky Ballet is a classical ballet company based at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in the 18th century and originally known as the Imperial Russian Ballet, the Mariinsky Ballet is one of the world's leading ballet companies...

; The New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...

; The San Francisco Ballet
San Francisco Ballet
The San Francisco Ballet is a ballet company, founded in 1933 as the San Francisco Opera Ballet. The company is currently based in the War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, under the direction of Helgi Tomasson. SFB is the first professional ballet company in the United States...

; The National Ballet of Canada
National Ballet of Canada
The National Ballet of Canada is Canada's largest ballet troupe. It was founded by Celia Franca in 1951 and is based in Toronto, Ontario. Based upon the unity of Canadian trained dancers in the tradition and style of England's Royal Ballet, The National is regarded as one of the premier classical...

; The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

; The Paris Opera Ballet
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...

; The Joffrey Ballet; The Bolshoi Ballet
Bolshoi Ballet
The Bolshoi Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company, based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1776, the Bolshoi is among the world's oldest ballet companies, however it only achieved worldwide acclaim by the early 20th century, when Moscow became the...

; and The Royal Ballet of Flanders.

Choreography

Forsythe’s choreography is grounded in a deconstructive reconsideration of the possibilities of classical ballet structures and theatricality, innovative applications of improvisation which he and his ensemble have developed and refined in over two decades of sustained dance research, and an increasingly collaborative approach to producing choreography. Forsythe works engage deeply with performative conventions and the fields of contemporary visual arts, architecture, and interactive multimedia.

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,http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu 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)
    • the Wexner Prize (2002)
    • Nijinsky Award (2002)
    • Dance Magazine
      Dance Magazine
      Dance Magazine is an "influential" American trade publication for dance, currently published by the Macfadden Communications Group. It was first published in June 1927 as The American Dancer. William Como was its editor-in-chief from 1970 to his death in 1989. Wendy Perron became its editor-in...

       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

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