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The Forsythe Company is a dance company created and directed by American choreographer William Forsythe. The company is based in Germany and consists of a group of 18 dancers who perform a range of pieces in areas such as performance, installation, film, and educational media. One of the basic ideas behind the company is the exploration of movement in Forsythe’s style, derived from classical ballet.

History
Forsythe founded the company in 2005 after his previous company, Ballett Frankfurt, closed in 2004. Based in German cities Dresden and Frankfurt, the Forsythe Company performs internationally in Europe and North America. Specifically, the company works at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt and the HELLERAU in Dresden. Support for the company comes from Hesse state, Saxony state, Frankfurt, Dresden, and private donors.

William Forsythe
Forsythe, born 1949, grew up in New York and was trained in classical ballet by one of George Balanchine’s students. After working with the Joffrey Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet, he started Ballett Frankfurt in 1984 at the age of 35. During his time with Ballett Frankfurt, Forsythe sought out a new approach to directing a ballet company. Notably, there were no principals in the company, and the dancers themselves were involved with choreographing performances. With the Forsythe Company, he strives to have a personal relationship with each of the dancers and create an "intimate dance family" based on collaboration and creativity. An article in The Guardian quotes Forsythe saying, "[...] I wanted to set this company up as a workshop, literally, where we all make things. If everyone is responsible for creating material, then everyone is in charge and everyone is dependent on everyone else. It's my job still to organise the situation, to frame the material, but I'm like a gallerist. This company isn't a gang of competing dancers - it's a community of artists".

According to the Forsythe Company’s website, Forsythe has been awarded numerous honors, such as “the title of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999) by the government of France and has received the German Distinguished Service Cross (1997), the Wexner Prize (2002) and the Golden Lion (2010).” He continues to influence dance in the 21st century by developing new approaches to research and education. The company is currently working on a research project called Motion Bank.

Motion Bank
Motion Bank is a research project of the Forsythe Company. Over the four years during which the project will take place, the intent is to collaborate with guest choreographers on pieces that will be made public via the Motion Bank website. The project focuses on dance education for the public, including lectures, performances, and workshops with choreographers. The pilot project of Motion Bank is a collaboration with The Ohio State University’s Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and Department of Dance. Titled One Flat Thing, Reproduced, the piece is an 18-minute performance which features “17 dancers navigating a 20-table grid.” It is an exploration of movement over time, inspired by baroque machinery. According to The Ohio State University, Motion Bank is an "an interactive web project developed in collaboration with The Ohio State University which offers extensive interdisciplinary insight into the complex structures of choreographic thinking".

Notable Choreographies

 * Decreation, choreographed by William Forsythe, according to critic Dana Craine of The Times, "is based on an essay by the Canadian writer Anne Carson that deals with love, divinity and the concept of self. It's presented [...] as the breakdown of a marriage, with an epic battle between husband and wife born of betrayal, jealousy and anger, the whole wrapped around a tortuous treatise on the nature and desire of the human soul".
 * Human Writes, a performance-installation by William Forsythe and Kendall Thomas, is "an allegory on the difficulties of putting human rights into practice" according to critic Gerald Siegmund. The experiment lasts between three and four hours in a room set up with sixty tables covered in paper. The audience guides the dancers in recreating words and phrases from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Forsythe's inspiration for this work.
 * I don’t believe in outer space, choreographed by William Forsythe, combines speech, song and dance in Forsythe's interpretation of the fleeting qualities of life. Fourteen dancers interact onstage amid balls of duct tape, acting out a variety of situations that range from a ping pong match to a disco class.
 * Kammer/Kammer, originally choreographed by William Forsythe for Ballett Frankfurt, was described by Forsythe as "[...] based on two extraordinary pieces of text by Anne Carson and Douglas Martin. It is about two characters who reflect on the nature of their homosexual love affairs and their eventual, devastating demise. The choreography, though, is for the camera. It’s a live film, a film that gets made before your eyes".
 * Three Atmospheric Studies, choreographed by William Forsythe, is a political commentary broken into three parts that tells the story of the suffering the Iraq War has caused civilians . It was originally inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder's Lamentation Beneath the Cross (1503).

Notable Dancers

 * Dana Caspersen was a member of Ballett Frankfurt before joining the Forsythe Company in 2005. According to wpp.research.yale.edu, "[...] she has created numerous works for the stage, functioning variously as a dancer, actress, choreographer and author. For her work as a performer she has been nominated for the Lawrence Olivier Theater Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance and was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Creative Achievement".
 * Fabrice Mazliah joined Ballett Frankfurt in 1997 after being a member of the Nederlands Dans Theater. He is now part of the Forsythe Company and simultaneously creates his own projects.
 * Inma Rubio Tomas is a guest member of the company who has choreographed for Scapino Ballet, the Choreographic Center of Valencia, and the Dansa Valencia Festival.
 * Richard Siegal is a guest artist with the company who founded his own company, The Bakery Paris-Berlin, in 2005. He is a MacDowell fellow and a faculty member of the American Dance Festival. He has been awarded the New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award and the German National Theater Faust Award.
 * Tilman O’Donnell, according to The Göteborg Opera, "[...] trained at the National Ballet School in Toronto, Canada. He has previously been a dancer at Göteborgs Operan’s Ballet, Staatstheater Saarbrücken and Cullbergbaletten. He has been dancing with The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt since 2007. He had his debut as a choreographer in 2002 and has been awarded first prize together with Shintaro Oue in two international choreography competitions. In 2005 he was appointed both 'Dancer to watch' and 'Choreographer to watch' by the leading European dance magazine Ballet Tanz".
 * Yoko Ando has been a member of the company since it was founded and was previously a member of Ballett Frankfurt. She now performs and choreographs for other dance companies in addition to creating her own projects.