William Forsythe’s deep engagement with the vocabulary, structures and norms of traditional ballet has widened perception, expanded practice, and reshaped expectations for the future of the art form.
Forsythe’s innovation has been to relentlessly question the array of mechanisms that underlie the genre of classical ballet, interrogating aspects of performance that had previously been assumed to be self-evident. The first striking example was the repeated, abrupt falls of the stage curtain which interrupted his 1984 production of Artifact. These curtain falls were timed to coincide with the musical chapters of Bach’s D-minor Chaconne, allowing for entirely new visual episodes to be established when the curtain rose again. This dynamic interruption of the historical performance format deeply disconcerted those viewers entrenched in the structures of 19th century ballet classicism, while also providing a mesmerizing suite of novel visual confrontations. The relentless waves of change crashed over the audience and alerted them that an era of a new order was imminent.