1. William Forsythe The desire to interpret history is elicited by our need to understand the present and to measure the future.

2. William Forsythe

4. Forsythe Bio Born in New York in 1949. Late teens trained at Joffrey and American Ballet Theater. Love of movement from athletics to jive: “the dancing state” Danced with Joffrey. Stuttgart Ballet in 1973. 1984 became director of Frankfurt Ballet. Presently, The Forsythe Company.

5. Deterritorialization of Disciplines: Cross-pollination of Ballet and Modern Not rebelling against the past. Not rebelling against Ballet. “The past doesn’t vanish. It presents itself as a set of references, signs, lines of forces defining the ground on which all of us stands.” – Andre Lepecki Ballet and Modern = texts of Knowledge.

6. Deconstruction fragmentation an interest in manipulating a structure’s surface or skin stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

7. Deconstructing Ballet Ballet: Classical technique is a “usable language capable of new meaning rather than a collection of traditionally-linked steps following traditional rules and subject matter.” – ‘How can I use the knowledge in these dancers bodies to question what others kinds of movement is the body capable of making?’ – “Why does (ballet) always have to tell the same stories?” Ballet is a “language” or “text” that can be read/written/rewritten/recombined. Tells his dancers to not be afraid to feel like they are speaking gibberish as they give this ballet language a new syntax. This idea of dissembling a rearranging the texts of ballet is partially inspired by the French theorist we explored yesterday, Roland Barthes.

8. Bodies in Forsythe Bodies as Knowledge and Memory Free association of memory: we all of have this. Training: data in bodies reconfigured to make new knowledge. “Ballet is a body of knowledge not an ideology”

9. Modes of Labor and Support European in a state system Decentralized Practices: Collaboration and “Improvisation Technologies” – Tools for expanding on ballet’s vocabulary. – Tools for dancers to generate their own material in the studio and in ‘real time’ on stage. – Not a ‘free-for-all’ but “a highly trained state in which dancers are able to rely on their own ability to access appropriate movements for themselves and their contexts.”

10. Compositional Strategies Multiplicity of centers Decentralized process: collaboration & improvisation Decentralized body: polycentric body Interdisciplinarity Post-modernism – A celebration of eclecticism

11. William Forsythe Synchronous Objects: interdisciplinary collaborations and choreographic objects “We consider dialogue, thinking, research and making as equal constituents of our labor.” *

12. William Forsythe American choreographer. One of the most, if not the most, important choreographers of the last 25 years. Director of Frankfurt Ballet (1984-2004), and now The Forsythe Company. Lauded for reinvigorating/re-inventing the language of classical ballet through a comprehensive re-examination of its most fundamental assumptions. Insists that ballet is a body of knowledge that can be used to address current concerns. Shifts the process of creation from the individual choreographer to include improvisation and collaboration. Has created a crossover audience, extending beyond the ballet and dance communities: though his far-ranging references, insistence that ballet is a contemporary medium, and interdisciplinary engagements.

13. Counterpoint “kinds of organization in time” Surface structure: unison Deep structure: chaotic Surface structure: chaotic Deep structure: unison

14. One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000) & Synchronous Objects Website VideoVideo

15. “What if we got people together from many different disciplines and ask, ‘What else might this dance look like? What else might physical thinking look like’?”

16. Making Synchronous ObjectsMaking Synchronous Objects (5:18)

17. Synchronous Objects: Cue Annotations

18. Synchronous Objects/ Alignment Annotations

19. Choreographic Objects City of Abstracts and gallery view of video works (from left) Antipodes and Solo from the exhibition William Forsythe: Transfigurations installed at the Wexner Center for the Arts

20. Improvisation Technologies- Solo- Crystal Pite Forsythe-Lines-Point point line-2-Extrusion

21. Human Writes, a performance installation by William Forsythe and Kendall Thomas, which premiered October 2005 in Zurich.

23. Scattered Crowd

26. Hybridity

27. We will see how Forsythe’s work has routes in earlier 20 th Century interdisciplinary experiments and questions: What are the possibilities and limitations of this medium? What are the limits of the body? How can we engage audiences? How can art reflect/change society? Where can performance take place? How is meaning produced? What knowledge is enacted in dance? How do we record performance? What gets lost?