Hello, My Name Is...

William Forsythe.

Forsythe was trained in classical ballet, but decided to expand past the general constrains of the style. He drew from many different sources to develop his own movement style utilizing all points of the body as possible points for movement initiation that could move in any plane. Classical arms were switched for sharper angles, and the movement became more about the power of the lines of the body rather than the grace of those lines.

Although he began his training in the United States, Forsythe made his name in Germany. Now he both choreographs and tours his own company worldwide, known for the advances his has made to the classical art form. He has also contributed to improvisation in dance, combining his ideas with the work of Laban.

I personally appreciate the work Forsythe has done through his development of the ballet technique. Building off the classical structure as a foundation, he then extends every principle past the boundaries normally held, requiring the dancers to have great strength, technique, and sense of daring. He morphs classical and modern forms of dance into his own style that has developed from Balanchine's ideas to his own innovative works that provide various messages to the audience and are constantly breaking or stretching more and more rules of the classical form.

I have designed this blog to demonstrate these qualities, elucidate on how they have formed, and provide various external sources that further complete the picture. The photographs of dancers show stills of his work, and many of the links lead to different video sources to show his art in action.

Fitting In: The World Around Him

In Forsythe’s time period, much emphasis was being placed on racial equality (as well as women’s rights and the acceptance of homosexuality). This is expressed in Gabriele Brandstetter's article "Defigurative Choreography: From Marcel Duchamp to William Forsythe." “Forsythe plays with such perceptual phenomena: The sentence “Everything is all right,” spoken by a black dancer, gradually spills into a narration of catastrophes, while the group of dancers synchronously translates the word “right” spatially by dancing on the “right side.” That it is a black dancer is significant, since Forsythe is choreographically critiquing the polarization of the political left and right as well as those who claim to know what should and shouldn’t be considered “politically correct.” The spectator is faced with the question: Who stands or moves on the right side of which text? The words displace the figures, and the figures the words.”
Postmodern structures were breaking through in architecture, which Forsythe studied and alluded to in his performance programs, such as in the performance of his work Artifact. It is this study of architecture that explains his use of lines and points as well as distortions of shapes in his movements, which he emphasizes in his improvisation techniques.
	Forsythe also used the changes occurring in the dance world to influence not only the style but the subject matter of his work. Having worked with Balanchine, he continued to use dancers with great amounts of flexibility and choreographed the movements to be constantly pulling off center. He constantly looked for ways to distort classical movements in his creations. In his piece In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, he also related the growing competition in the dance world that has evolved.

Who Do You Think You Are: Lineage

Although as a child, William Forsythe adored Fred Astaire, his most significant influence came from George Balanchine. While he studied at Jacksonville University, he trained under Nolan Dingman who was an early company member of Balanchine's, sparking Forsythe's interest in the form and style. Until he developed his own style, he mimicked Balanchine's choreography using ideas such as the torsion of the body. Soon he learned that he wanted to draw from his own cultural influences and his past to personalize his works to reflect himself rather than Balanchine.

After moving to Germany, he began creating his own works with the Frankfurt Ballet after creating the controversial piece Gänge, subtitled "A piece about ballet." He continued with the Frankfurt Ballet until 2004, when they performed for the last time, and he moved on to creating the Forsythe Company.

In his own works, he incorporated many mathematically based ideas to form his movements as well as music and architecture. To give what he felt was an acoustic space to dance, he worked with the Dutch composer Thom Willems, valuing the hard percussive sounds present through the music. He also drew influences from Italian artist Tiepolo (whose work can be seen in the image above), architecture, sculptures, and American rock and roll.

Impact Me With Form + Content!

Defiguration: the dissolution of figure.

Following the ideas of Rudolf Laban, Forsythe generates much of his movement based upon a crystalline geometry of the body and uses this structure to generate points and planes in the body which can initiate polycentric movement. In addition to this, he contributed to postmodern ballet with his incorporation of an anti-structural, disjointed deconstruction of movements along with his use of putting a greater emphasis on image and overall intent rather than a structured storyline. In his works, Forsythe also blurred the gender roles of the dancers, and much of the pas work put an equal importance on both dancers to execute the movements. Similar to Balanchine's works, the partnering is utilized to achieve movements otherwise unattainable, using the strengths of both of the dancers.

Forsythe was a very analytical man. He noted the importance of math, physics, and philosophy in dance. He created many movements by observing the physics of them and then used a "mathematical prescription" to define them. He also has utilized formulas and theories from physics and combined them with the geometrical shapes he wished to set in the body. Included in these were geometrical fractals, or the image of way things fold and unfold, feeding into each other and themselves, along with tessellations.

In 1994, Forsythe created a computer application called Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye. This program assists with creating new movements in improvisation and has been used by professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, and even postgraduate architecture programs. This is fitting due to the large influence postmodern architecture has had on the forms created in Forsythe's works. It is almost ironic how the great amount of careful detail and structure went into freeing the form of ballet.

So What Is It All About, And Why Should I Care?

Our generation is all about breaking the rules. Why not? It is one of the best ways to expand all of our ideas as well as those that have come before us. In almost every description of William Forsythe, the writer or interviewer notes his work as reforming classical ballet, yet they all feel this falls short and is too constraining to fully describe what he has done.

Forsythe finds ways to radiate importance both in his overall collection of contributions to the art as well as in individual pieces. He has undeniably contributed greatly to modernizing ballet, and some have attributed him with inventing the modern ballerina. Apart from this general reformation, many of his works have their own individual characteristics that set them apart and give them value. For instance, his piece Forehand utilizes silences throughout parts of the music to give the audience a self awareness. He searches to make various statements in his pieces also, such as the irony used to address Western civilization in Impressing the Czar.

Although much of modern dance is designed to depart entirely from classical techniques and ideas, Forsythe instead decides to break selective rules to expand upon and enhance them. Certain classical aspects are retained such as pointe shoes and elements of the ballet vocabulary, but he abandons many others in favor of modern ideas such as polycentrism and polyrhythm. His improvisation program has also been very beneficial to the dance world. While ballet is looked upon as a very strict and sometimes monotonous and restrictive form of dance, William Forsythe has managed to break all of the boundaries to expand the art. It is a wonderful example of the beauty being in the form, as he creates modern movement that has added some of the rules and features of ballet and has internationally succeeded in this development.