Press Release
William Forsythe is recognized world-wide as the foremost chore-ographer of contemporary ballet. For twenty years as director of the Ballett Frankfurt, his choreography and his company’s performances have consistently won overwhelming audience acclaim and the most prestigious awards the field has to offer. His work has significantly re-oriented the practice of ballet from its historical encapsulation in classical repertoire to a new viability as a dynamic art form of the 21st century.
After the closure of the Ballett Frankfurt at the end of the 2003/2004 season, Forsythe will inaugurate a new private company in January 2005.
The Forsythe Company will continue to create work as a logical extension of the Ballett Frankfurt and will employ many of the same dancers, technicians and staff.
However, by operating on a much smaller institutional scale, The Forsythe Company will be able to extend its artistic impact by pursuing a wide range of new and unconventional projects that were not possible to elaborate fully within the city-funded institution of the Ballett Frankfurt.
The private status of the new company will encourage alternative sources of funding to support the work and will provide greater transparency in all of its business transactions. With a more flexible organization, a streamlined administrative team, and a smaller corps of dancers, Forsythe plans to initiate new projects in a number of different genres including performance installations, interactive projects in public space, multi-media based works and productions for video and film.
Forsythe will create new choreographic works with the company especially for performance in the extensive, versatile and historically resonant architectural spaces of the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden and the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt am Main. The company will also maintain a full touring schedule with pieces suitable for theatrical venues throughout the world.
Forsythe is also in the process of developing an international dance education program. The newly-established Forsythe Foundation will lead this collaborative venture with several academic and dance training institutions in Europe, the United States and South America.
Based on his own practical training techniques as well as on studies in philosophy, science and critical theory, Forsythe is undertaking to shift the public perception of dance by educating its current and future practitioners in contemporary physical and critical discourses.
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Tänzer / Dancers: Yoko Ando, Cyril Baldy, Francesca Caroti, Dana Caspersen, Amancio Gonzalez, Ayman Harper, Sang Jijia, David Kern, Marthe Krummenacher, Brock Labrenz, Vanessa Le Mat, Ioannis Mandafounis, Fabrice Mazliah, Georg Reischl, Jone San Martin, Heidi Vierthaler, Elizabeth Waterhouse, Ander Zabala.
For more information about The Forsythe Company, visit their new website.
<small>[ 21 July 2004, 04:32 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>