William Forsythe

William Forsythe grew up in New York and studied in Florida. He danced with the Joffrey Ballet and was invited to the Stuttgart Ballet in 1976 as a choreographer-in-residence. He would stay in Stuttgart for seven years, choreographing for other ensembles around the world, too, during his time there.

In 1984, he began his 20-year career as director of the Frankfurt Ballet, with which he created the choreographies that would establish him as one of the most significant choreographers in the history of dance: “Artifact” (1984), “Impressing the Czar” (1988), “Limb's Theorem” (1990), “Eidos: Telos” (1995), and “Decreation” (2003).

After the dissolution of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2004, he founded a new ensemble, the Forsythe Company, which he would go on to direct from 2005 to 2015. During this period, in which he choreographed exclusively for the Company, his earlier works became part of the repertoire of literally every noteworthy dance ensemble in the world, from the Mariinsky to the Paris Opera Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.

He has received several "Bessie" (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007) and “Laurence Olivier” (1992, 1999, 2009) awards, along with numerous other distinctions including the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.

Major institutions have commissioned him to create installations which activate architectural spaces with performances. ‘Choreographic objects’ of this sort (to use Forsythe’s own term for such works) have been presented at celebrated museums and galleries including the Louvre, the Tate Modern, MoMA, and the Venice Biennale.

In cooperation with specialists in the given fields, he has also created tools for recording, and researching dance and for dance education. The application “Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye”, which he created in collaboration with the ZKM / Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, is one of the most important tools currently in use in dance education institutions around the world. He gives lessons, masterclasses and workshops at universities and cultural institutions, and continues to amaze the dance community with his initiatives and the innovative research that underpin his projects.