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William Forsythe By LISA ROBINSON
One of the most innovative choreographers working today, William Forsythe has been artistic director of the Frankfurt Ballet since 1984. Forsythe was born in New York City in 1949 and studied dance at Jacksonville University in Florida and later at the Joffrey Ballet School. In 1973, he joined Germany's Stuttgart Ballet as a dancer, and later began choreographing works for the company. It was there that he made his first piece, Urlicht, a duet to the music of Gustav Mahler.
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| William Forsythe (Photo by Robin Lea) |
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Over the next several years, Forsythe created numerous ballets for the Stuttgart Ballet and for other leading companies, including the Basel Ballet, Munich Ballet, the Deutsche Opera Ballet in Berlin, the Joffrey Ballet, and Netherlands Dance Theater. A year after creating Gänge, his first full-length work for the Frankfurt Ballet, Forsythe became the company's artistic director. Over the last two decades, he has created a body of work reflecting his singular artistic vision and established the Frankfurt Ballet as a leading international force in contemporary dance. (A current company member, Brock Labrenz, is a 2003 graduate of Juilliard's Dance Division.)Forsythe's early works, until around 1982, expanded the traditions of German Expressionist dance, while his later works have been heavily influenced by contemporary critical theory: The Frankfurt Ballet's Web site includes an excerpt from the introduction to Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge, and Forsythe has identified his favorite author as Roland Barthes.Describing his approach, dance critic Roslyn Sulcas wrote in a 1998 article for The New York Times that "Mr. Forsythe has developed an idiosyncratic, personal style of movement into a complex physical language that encompasses, utilizes and often transcends classical dance. Watching a Forsythe work is to enter a thrilling theatrical universe with its own laws and logic, in which movement, sound, lighting and space draw the spectator into unexpected and compelling realms."Forsythe's language is so complex that in 1994, he created a CD-ROM as a learning tool for new dancers in his company. This process led in turn to the creation of "Self Meant to Govern," the first part of one of his most important works, Eidos: Telos (1995). In that work, dancers can apply various operations to 135 sequences cued to them by letters on clocks.Some of Forsythe's other key works over the last 20 years include Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb's Theorem (1991), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), A L I E/N A(C)TION (1992), Endless House (1999), and Kammer/Kammer (2000).Forsythe continues to stage pieces for companies around the globe, and his work is in the repertoire of the New York City Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, and the Paris Opéra Ballet, among others. Under his direction, the Frankfurt Ballet has performed at the Oper and Schauspiel in Frankfurt and toured internationally. Since 1999 the company has also performed at the Bockenheimer Depot (TAT) in Frankfurt, a performance space housed in a converted tramway depot, where Forsythe serves as director and continues to develop site-specific work like Endless House. The company's 2003-04 season concludes with appearances in Zellerbach Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, the Kennedy Center in Washington, and the Théâtre de Chaillot in Paris. Forsythe is ending his contract with the Frankfurt Ballet at the conclusion of this season.
Beginning in 2005, Forsythe will continue his work in Germany with a smaller, independent troupe that will be supported by and perform in both the Bockenheimer Depot and the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden.Earlier this year, he was awarded Germany's top dance prize for his role in revitalizing ballet and modern dance. At the ceremony in Essen, Klaus Zehelein, president of Germany's Theater Association, commended Forsythe for his "extraordinary service to the artistic world of dance." On May 21, Forsythe will be awarded Juilliard's Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree.
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