One of the greatest of contemporary choreographers, William Forsythe (b. 1949) is recognized for having renewed conventional ballet by breaking down its codes and propelling it into the 21st century. A native of New York, Forsythe studied in Florida alongside Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, danced at the Joffrey Ballet, and then at the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed resident choreographer in 1978. In 1984 he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt, where he created an impressive body of original and daring works, notably Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), ALIE/NA(C)TION (1992), Eidos: Telos (1995), Endless House (1999), Kammer/Kammer (2000) and Decreation (2003). After the dissolution of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2004, Forsythe founded a new, more independent, ensemble, which he led from 2005 to 2015 and where he created the works Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), You made me a monster (2005), Human Writes (2005), Heterotopia (2006), The Defenders (2007), Yes we can’t (2008/2010), I don’t believe in outer space (2008), The Returns (2009) and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s more recent creations have been developed and performed exclusively by the Forsythe Company, while his earlier works can be found in the repertoires of the principal international ballet companies. In 2015, William Forsythe was named associate choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet.
