Why is this blog about William Forsythe the choreographer no longer active?

This blog is an archive of resources that I gathered as I wrote my dissertation for my postgraduate degree at Goldsmiths University. You can find me more active elsewhere on the internet, you can try my artist blog, which also is quiet these days and contains projects as well as project related research notes.

Anyhow. I am sure you really are just here because you share an interest in William Forsythe and some related materials. Dive in. I hope that many of the old links are still active, and I apologise in advance if many entries are no longer useful or live. The internet isn't ageing as well as I had once hoped it would or I would have created more long-lasting notes somehow. 

Let me know if you want me to take anything down. It would be a shame but I am happy to do it.

Greetings from the other side of the planet,

Birgit

links still open after I finished writing:

45 minute long BBC Radio 3 interview with William Forsythe, with transcript. Very useful
(Also saved in my pdf files with highlights and notes)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/forsythe_transcript.shtml

“…art forms are connected with different forms of time. At the moment I have the feeling that art is a manifestation of death, connected to a secret, when people are aware of the mechanisms of absence. Trance is related to that.  And dance is…”
(William Forsythe in an interview with Johananes Oldentahl in “Tanz Korper Politik”)

Presence and absence have always been connected to dance as an art form. The body as a medium between transcendence and materialization. In most cases dance is supposed to be a way of disappearing. Even in dance history, the hard core within that history, dance itself is absent.  A possible dance history has been substituted by another history; the history of the body.

At the beginning of the 21st century the body has found itself in the midst of pain, fear, chaos and war. Being endlessly attacked and constantly de-centered and above all trapped between fleeting physical-material acts within a confusion of bodies, concepts and strategies. We find ourselves encaged in all the diverse media´s imaginable and we stand inside all the possible spaces at once in all bodies we can think off. Within the works of contemporary choreographers like Forsythe, Charmatz, Le Roy and Stuart the absence of the body is as present as it is absent. 

Is there a connection to the revival of the hidden body in religion? To the renewed interest in shamanism and body rituals?  The discussions about the non-image in Judaism or Islam, the replaced body, the sacrificed bodies, ghosts and energies?  As a contribution in the discussion and research The School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in collaboration with the Lectoraat AHK presents between 21 May and 8 June 2007, a series of workshops and lectures called The Absent Body.
Absent Body, University in Netherlands, Hochschule der Künste
http://www.ahk.nl/lectoraten/kunstpraktijk/coproducties-en-projecten/absent-body/

Deleuze: Writing and Difference, the whole books as pdf file to read online
http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/humanidades/anderzon/materias/materiales/Writing_and_Difference__Routledge_Classics_.pdf

Categories, Beauty and Dance

Dana Casperson resonding to comments at the Walker Art Center, 2007, some insight, nice to read from someone in Forsythe's company (his wife) http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2007/04/

Exploring the Abstract Language of Contemporary Dance in order to create Emotional stances / nuances - a Masters of Arts Dissertation - 2006 - Csaba Steven Buday
A long dissertation by a dancer who has danced with Forsythe.
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16420/1/Csaba_Buday_Thesis.pdf

Scribd Documents, 3 pages on William Forsythe, some general information some useful additional information . Starting page 145. from book: Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Bremser, Martha
Routledge 2005 (first published 1999)
 http://www.scribd.com/doc/57280358/24/WILLIAM-FORSYTHE

Derrida / On Femininity, p.135
Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on dance and Performane Theory
Lepecki, Andre
University Press of New England (2004)
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WwK-lFzmAhAC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=dance%22+trace+derrida&source=bl&ots=31cfgRcipa&sig=tGddQAyA0UmRyGRxYbydupu8iiU&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=dance%22%20trace%20derrida&f=false

Wikipedia, Trace (deconstruction) - Derrida, Spivac
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trace_(deconstruction)

In my saved pdf files"
Journal of Architecture
Dance and drawing, choreography and architecture
Steven Spier

link to full page book chapter: William Forsythe / 50 contemporary choreographers

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57280358/Fifty-Contemporary-Choreographers#page=160

note to self: links to remember to click again

: http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/breathing/

presence and absence, Derrida: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/derriduction2.htm

SemperOper: http://www.semperoper.de/en/ballett/premieren/detailansicht/details/55915/besetzung/1581.html

Wexner Prize / Forsythe
http://www.wexarts.org/info/press/db/68_nr-prize02_combo.elec.pdf

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1090933/William-Forsythe

Absent Body: http://www.ahk.nl/lectoraten/kunstpraktijk/coproducties-en-projecten/absent-body/

epaulement: http://www.google.com/search?q=epaulement&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=S_M4UN62Lcqp0AXt74HQCA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1424&bih=764

The Complete Conductor's Guide to Laban Movement Theory (really good)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SMGEazQ_vmIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Jean nancy, deconstruction and stuff:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/nancy/

Gustav Mahler, Alfred Roller, and the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk:
"Tristan" and affinities between the arts at the Vienna Court Opera

http://udini.proquest.com/view/gustav-mahler-alfred-roller-and-the-pqid:1882449341/

Deleuze, Writng and Difference:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nsyH7x41RpsC&pg=PA312&lpg=PA312&dq=theatre+representation+is+finite,+and+leaves+behind+its+actual+presence,+no+traces,+no+object+to+carry+off,+it+is+neither+a+book+nor+a+work,+but+an+energy,+and+in+this+sense+it+is+the+only+art+of+life.”&source=bl&ots=IbQhnR5gc6&sig=QNrVzkuBSy02kWVUVkR2xH_8g6E&sa=X&ei=n2YuUIOsHaqx0QX604DoDA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=theatre%20representation%20is%20finite%2C%20and%20leaves%20behind%20its%20actual%20presence%2C%20no%20traces%2C%20no%20object%20to%20carry%20off%2C%20it%20is%20neither%20a%20book%20nor%20a%20work%2C%20but%20an%20energy%2C%20and%20in%20this%20sense%20it%20is%20the%20only%20art%20of%20life.”&f=false

Motionbank:
http://motionbank.org/uber/context/


The Trace in Derrida and Levinas:
http://umontreal.academia.edu/BettinaBergo/Talks/62407/The_Trace_in_Derrida_and_Levinas

video: William Forsythe / yes we can't

video: William Forsythe / Limbs Theorem

third act

video: William Forsythe / Synchronous Objects

video/ link: "keeping the don't know mind" William Forsythe

http://www.sadlerswells.com/page/screen/29403951001#

video: William Forsythe / Artifact

link/Article &video: William Forsythe

http://www.semperoper.de/en/ballett/premieren/detailansicht/details/55915/besetzung/1581.html

fantastic video edit on the page of Semperoper

also on Artifact, another nice video:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/9211413/William-Forsythe-interview-Artifact-is-an-ode-to-ballet.html

Forsythe / quote

Forsythe compares "One Flat Thing.." to Balanchines "Symphony in C."
He says, "It's the exact same principles except that we're no longer dealing
with.. that classic symmetry. These alignments have been.. distributed
evenly throughout the entire field of vision... a cloud of alignments."

source of transcript: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvu-O4pFgBQ&feature=related

text: journeys to no specific place

William Forsythe mentions references of journeys to the South Pole as being inspiration for his projects. Specifically One Flat Thing, or also known to the philistine as the riot in the cafeteria (source: Forsyther Interview, side remark about a critic), was influence by books Forsythe was reading at the time about expeditions to the South Pole: "I may be Some Time" by Francis Spufford and "South" by Ernest Shackleton.
(interview source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xqlq3q5RMrc )

Journeys like the south pole expeditions have no specific point of arrival, except for perhaps an actual point determined by a compass, the location of stars or some other mapping. But as much as the location goes there in no arrival at any concrete place. Nothing of any substance will have looked any different in a 100, 200, 300 mile radius. Snow and absence of sound and significant points of reference will be all encompassing. This scene reminds me of the sheets of paper that Merce Cunningham would use to find minor imperfections in to mark these to begin his journey to choreograph the next dance performance. Chance marks that could have been in this or that place on the paper becoming the source for movement. The south pole is not quite a chance point but the geology around it is going to be filled with chance marks that each could just as well be the point of destination.
There really is no discernible difference in arriving 10 miles or the left or right of the point specified. Eventually the achievement was not reaching the point but the challenge of endurance, or the inspiration however mad to persevere to find that point of nothing and load it with significance of everything. 

videos: William Forsythe - One flat thing reproduced 01/03

part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbVTR-l5RQ&feature=channel&list=UL
part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNebCPB9gqk&feature=channel&list=UL

videos: William Forsythe & Alva Noe on Consciousness

02:00 choreography... jump around... "actually, it's a compositional practice"

images: William Forsythe / Hypothetical Stream choreography (1997)

For the dance company of Daniel Larrieu

source for both images & great resources: http://sarma.be/oralsite/pages/William_Forsythe_on_Scores/

videos: William Forsythe / Laban model / backbone of my essay!

I can't quite believe the luck that I found these:
Improvisation Technologies excerpt from volker kuchelmeister on Vimeo.

Improvisation Technologies Laban model from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.

Improvisation Technologies Parallel Shear from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
Improvisation Technologies Extrusion Extension from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
Improvisation Technologies Lines and Planes from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
IT Curved Lines from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
 Improvisation Technologies Extruding & Collapsing Points from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
Improvisation Technologies Installation from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
Improvisation Technologies Noah D. Gelber demo from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.
Improvisation Technologies Prototype from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.

Improvisation Technologies, A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye from UNSW iCinema Centre on Vimeo.

link: fantastic resource / William Forsythe / Synchronous Objects

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/content.html#/cueVisualizer

video: William Forsythe / One Flat Thing (dance)

Forsythe will be a key figure in my dissertation. His movement schematics relate to
Oskar Schlemmers Triadic ballet (Bauhaus), Laban's system of movement and Merce
Cunningham's work. I will have a fair bit more to say about this soon. This is just to get the note taking started.