Early Training:
Joffrey Ballet and The American Ballet School - Maggie Black, Finis Jung, Jonathan Watts, Meredith Baylis, William Griffith, Leon Danelion, Mme. Periaslavic, Mme. Boskovitch, Nolan Dingman, Pat Wilde and Christa Long.
William Forsythe's dance training began at The Joffrey Ballet and The American Ballet School while there Forsythe took classes with Maggie Black, Finis Jung, Jonathan Watts, Meredith Baylis, William Griffith, Leon Danelion, Mme. Periaslavic, Mme. Boskovitch, Nolan Dingman, Pat Wilde and Christa Long. Forsythe joined Joffrey Ballet II and later got into Joffrey Ballet I for a brief amount of time before getting scooped up by John Cranko to join the Stuttgart Ballet. Cranko died the same year and Marcia Hayde took over the company encouraging Forsythe to choreograph a work for the company. While in Europe Forsythe developed and forged ties with Pina Bausch, and Jiř Kylian. It is very evident how both play into the work of William Forsythe.
"One Flat Thing reproduced" Pacific Northwest Ballet - This featurette displays footage and information displaying influences of Balanchine as well as what could also be influences of Pina Bausch.
Forsythe's style of movement has a fundamental basis in ballet but pushes the traditional norms by working with many different influences. The strongest influence is improvisation. Through research and studies of the work of Rudolph Von Laban William Forsythe developed a very insightful technique for choreography and performance.
William Forsythe has also explored many collaborations with performance artist Dana Caspersen, performance based electro-composer Joel Ryan, and video sculptor Peter Welz.
Information on Tight Roaring Circle by William Forsythe, Dana Caspersen, and Joel Ryan.
Tight Roaring Circle
Most recently William Forsythe has been working with Ohio State University in the 2009 final development of Synchonized Objects. Synchronized Objects is a highly technical computer choreographic analysis system. The system has several applications which break down many choreographic structures and laban paradigms. The work done on this project is very extensive and even discribes how the technology is being used and applied to other elements of design and organization such as architecture. Visit the synchronized objects link on the right to get a glimpse of the breakdown of William Forsythe's One Flat Thing reproduced.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It’s interesting that he was strongly influenced by improvisation, considering he has such a strong background in ballet. I looked up some videos on youtube of works he did and it is easy to see that he has a strong ballet influence. I also completely agree with you that it is evident that Pina Bausch, and Jiř Kylian had an influence on Forsythe because although his choreography has an evident ballet discipline it also ventures outside the balletic style into a more contemporary style.
ReplyDeleteIn your blog you wrote, “Through research and studies of the work of Rudolph Von Laban William Forsythe developed a very insightful technique for choreography and performance.” Could you describe this a bit more?
Yes, stay tuned. I am getting ready to add more about his work with technology. In collaboration with Ohio State University a really interesting computer choreography analysis system has been developed. There is a link posted to the website for that program under links called sychronous objects. It's extremely interesting. The work you can see with the computer program directly relates to a lot of laban analysis fundamentals.
ReplyDelete