William
Forsythe
William Forsythe was
born in New York City in 1949. He studied dance at Jacksonville
University, Florida and later at the Joffrey Ballet School.
In 1973 Forsythe joined Germany's Stuttgart Ballet as a dancer,
and later began choreographing works for the company. It was
here that he made his first piece, Urlicht, a duet
to the music of Gustav Mahler.
Over the next seven
years, Forsythe made over 20 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 Nederlands Dance Theater. One of his earliest works,
Flore Subsimplici, was part of the Stuttgart Ballet's
season at the London Coliseum in 1978. One of Forsythe's best
known works from this period is Side 2-Love Songs,
which was later filmed for television.
In 1984, Forsythe
became the Director of Ballett Frankfurt, a year after creating
his full-length work for the company, Gänge. With
his new company, he set out to create challenging original works
which were removed from conventional ballet and to build a new
audience. Since this time, Forsythe has developed a unique
ballet aesthetic which does not deny traditional ballet technique
but which both deconstructs/constructs, broadening and challenging
the lexicon.
Forsythe's key works over the past seventeen
years include Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar
(1988), Limb's Theorem (1991), The Loss of Small
Detail (1991), A L I E/NA(C)TION (1992) and Eidos:
Telos (1995), Endless House (1999), and Kamer
/ 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, San Francisco Ballet, The National
Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, the Royal Swedish
Ballet, among others. These works tend to focus primarily upon
ballet dancing, whereas with his own Ballett Frankfurt ensemble
he tends to use more complex movement and theatrical environments.
Ballett Frankfurt performs at the Oper and Schauspiel in Frankfurt
and tours internationally. Since October 1999, his company also
performs at the Bockenheimer Depot (TAT) in Frankfurt, a performance
space housed in a converted tramway depot, where Forsythe continues
to develop new site-specific work. In January 1999 Forsythe became
Director of both Ballett Frankfurt and TAT. The company will disbank
at the conclusion of its 2003-04 season.
Ballett Frankfurt —
2003 Next Wave Festival
Ballett Frankfurt — 2001 Next Wave Festival
Ballett Frankfurt — 1998 Next Wave Festival