WILLIAM FORSYTHE
Antipodes I / II, 2006

Video installation
Music by Ryoji Ikeda
Premiere: Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Courtesy of The William Forsythe Company

DESCRIPTION

William Forsythe’s Antipodes I/II consists of two videos shown on facing screens suspended at different heights – one elevated, the other grazing the floor. The video on the raised screen shows Forsythe attempting to hold onto a table attached to the ceiling, while in the second video he moves buoyantly between two tables resting on the floor.

Each video has a different soundtrack, engaging with and complementing their disparity. While the grounded screen is partnered with an otherworldly score by Ryoji Ikeda, the soundtrack for the higher screen features the assertively realistic noise of Forsythe’s movements. The video installation, which dramatizes Forsythe’s childhood belief that someone traveling to the South Pole risked falling off the planet, subverts the relationship between embodiment and gravity.

BIOGRAPHY

William Forsythe reorients the practice of classical ballet to a dynamic 21st-century art form. Forsythe’s interest in the principles of organization has led him to produce projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation.

Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. He created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and ballet companies in Munich, The Hague, London, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Paris, New York, and San Francisco. The Forsythe Company, founded with the support of the states of Saxony and Hesse, the cities of Dresden and Frankfurt am Main, and private sponsors, is based in Dresden and Frankfurt am Main and continues to tour internationally.

The Forsythe Company is company-in-residence of both the Festspielhause Hellerau in Dresden and the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt am Main. With special thanks to Ms. Susanne Klatten for supporting The Forsythe Company.

Image courtesy of Julian Richter