William Forsythe

This chapter situates the work of William Forsythe in relation to ballet as an institutionalized practice, examining the various ways that he both implemented and challenged basic tenets of the form. The chapter argues that as director of the Frankfurt Ballet, Forsythe slowly transformed the company from a machinery for the production of spectacle into a collective of choreographers who consistently reflected on their own processes of dancemaking. In devising entirely new vocabularies of ballet movement, reorienting the aesthetic goals of ballet performance, and reorganizing the functional operations of the ballet company, he profoundly changed ballet’s meaning and purpose and fundamentally intervened in its history.