Winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the last International Festival of Contemporary Dance of the Biennale di Venezia in 2010, William Forsythe is an artist in constant evolution who never ceases to question the processes of dance, its structure and its dynamics. The now famous “choreographic objects”, created by Forsythe and exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, are one of the tools of this exploration. In Venice, the artist from New York will present his choreographic installation Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time for its Italian premiere performance.
“Given that dance and choreography are two different practices, is it possible for choreography – wonders Forsythe – to express its principles and concepts without the body?” To answer this question he created his many choreographic objects: these objects are not a substitute for the body, but “an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and organization of action to reside”, another way to express choreographic thinking. Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, which premiered in New York in 2005, and was performed in Dresden and Frankfurt in 2007, at the Tate Modern in London in 2009 and at the Arts Festival of Taipei last year, now comes to the Biennale di Venezia. It will invade the spaces of the Artiglierie in the Arsenale with its hundreds of pendulums hanging from thin metal wires and swaying as they are set in motion by the movements of dancer Brock Labrenz, strained to explore the gravity and kinetic potential of the space.
Forsythe came to the Biennale di Venezia for the first time with You Made Me a Monster, which inaugurated the 3rd International Contemporary Dance Festival in 2005; he returned to the Biennale four years later with The Fact of Matter/Choreographic Object, this time with an invitation to the 53rd International Art Exhibition curated by Director Daniel Birnbaum, before winning the prize for Lifetime Achievement, on which occasion he presented his choreography N.N.N.N.