William Forsythe (dancer)

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William Forsythe (2012)

William Forsythe (born December 30, 1949 in New York City ) is an American dancer and choreographer . During his time as the ballet director of the Frankfurt Ballet (1984–2004) he established himself as one of the most important contemporary choreographers.

Life

After studying dance at the Joffrey Ballet School and Jacksonville University in Florida , he danced for the Joffrey Ballet from 1971 , and in 1973 John Cranko signed him for the Stuttgart Ballet . He began to choreograph in Stuttgart , and in the “pre-Frankfurt era” his works were already being shown in Munich , The Hague , London , Basel , Berlin , Frankfurt am Main , Paris , New York, San Francisco and at the Cantiere Internazionale d 'Arte listed. From 1981 on he worked as a freelance choreographer. With his strictly mathematical, but figuratively sensual dance language, which is oriented towards classical ballet, he is one of the most important representatives of modern ballet.

In 1984 he took over the position of ballet director of the Frankfurt company, which he renamed Ballet Frankfurt . In 1999 Forsythe became artistic director of the ballet and the TAT . At the end of the 2003/04 season, the ballet ensemble was dissolved. He then founded the independent Forsythe Company.

From 2005 to 2015 he headed The Forsythe Company with venues in Frankfurt / Main and Dresden (especially Festspielhaus Hellerau ). Since 2015 he has been Professor of Practice in Dance at the University of Southern California and advisor to the choreographic institute, the research department of the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, which was founded in 2012 .

The choreographer

The later Stuttgart artistic director Klaus Zehelein , as chief dramaturge at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt (1977–1987), recognized Forsythe's exceptional talent and initiated the call to Frankfurt. William Forsythe began his first season as a ballet director in 1984. The change in ballet from classical to neo-classical at the beginning of the fifties and sixties had reached its limits. In the constant search for something new, Forsythe succeeded in breaking this stagnation and creating a turning point. Forsythe supplemented the vocabulary of classical ballet by canceling the assignment of the body to the audience alone and suddenly having it dance for the side street or even the rear portal. Previously it was mainly the sternum that was supposed to point towards the viewer, now it was all limbs and all directions that had to play an essential role.

This resulted in an infinite variety of movement and space, which the ballet dancer had never seen before. Freed from distraction, ballet has thus been reconstituted. Many of Forsythe's ballets contain only sparse sets (e.g. Limb's Theorem ), which gave the dancer even more importance. In the early 1960s, Wieland Wagner did a great job of removing the dust from performance in opera, it was Forsythe who began to break with conventions in ballet. Sophisticated lighting put dancers in a silhouette that had never been seen before . Partly like a silhouette, partly illuminated from the side or sometimes with stage work light, he created a hitherto unknown perception of danced bodies. The break with the subscription audience, the brief Egon Madsen period (1981–1984), lasted for at least three years with very strong expressions of displeasure. In the old Stuttgart productions that remained in the repertoire from Madsen's time in Frankfurt , William Forsythe was even discovered as a dancer at one point or another.

The digital dance library

Forsythe wants to make the notation system he developed, with which a choreography can be reconstructed using a score, accessible to artists, dance scholars and a specialist public in the web-based "Motion Bank" - which is still being tested. He is interested in the “legibility of choreography” and “fundamental organizational principles” of dance. The Bundeskulturstiftung (Halle) is providing the digital dance library initiated by Forsythe with 1.4 million euros.

Major works

1976: Urlicht

1982: corridors

1983: France / Dance

1984: Artifact

1986: Isabelle's Dance

1986: The questioning of Robert Scott †

1987: New Sleep

1987: In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated

1988: Impressing The Czar

1989: Enemy in the Figure

1990: Limb's Theorem

1990: Slingerland

1991: The Second Detail

1991: The Loss of Small Detail

1992: Herman Schmerman

1992: ALIE / NA (C) TION

1993: quintet

1995: Eidos: Telos

1996: Duo

1996: The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude

1996: Approximate Sonata

1998: Workwithinwork

1999: Three Atmospheric Studies

1999: Pas / Parts

2000: One Flat Thing, reproduced

2000: Chamber / Chamber

2002: NNNN

2003: Decreation

2005: Human Writes

2007: I don't believe in Outer Space

2008: Yes, We Can't

2008: The Defenders

2009: The Returns

2011: Sider

2012: Study # 3

2016: Blake Works I

2018: A Quiet Evening of Dance

2019: Playlist (EP)

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : William Forsythe (choreographer)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ballet Frankfurt. Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt am Main, accessed on March 13, 2019 .
  2. ↑ William Forsythe. Biography. USC, Institute of Choreography, accessed October 29, 2019 .
  3. ^ USC Choreographic Institute. USC Kaufman School of Dance, accessed on April 24, 2020 (English): "the USC Choreographic Institute is the research platform of the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California"
  4. ^ A Patron With Passion in Los Angeles. In: The New York Times. January 11, 2013, accessed on April 24, 2020 (English, conversation with the patron).
  5. ↑ Forsythe plans digital dance library , report on art-magazin.de, December 11, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Forsythe, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American dancer and choreographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City