For Christopher Roman, former dancer and director of the Forsythe  Company, it was self-evident that William Forsythe should be part of the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE repertoire. For a long time based in Germany, the master created a duo titled Catalogue (First Edition) for it,  which has, he says, a ‘complex, almost baroque’ choreography. Christopher Roman joins forces again with Jill Johnson, a past  collaborator who also came into the orbit of Forsyth (alternating with  Brit Rodemund). Together they explore their physical memory in the  present.

Source: program of the CND 

Raised in New York and initially trained in  Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the  Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed  Resident Choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, 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. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the  Ballet Frankfurt, where he created works such as Artifact (1984),  Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small  Detail (1991), A L I E / N A(C)TION (1992), Eidos:Telos (1995), Endless  House (1999), Kammer/Kammer (2000), and Decreation (2003)  

After the closure of the Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, Forsythe  established a new ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he directed from  2005 to 2015. Works produced with this ensemble include Three  Atmospheric Studies (2005), You made me a monster (2005), Human Writes  (2005), Heterotopia (2006), The Defenders (2007), Yes we can’t  (2008/2010), I don’t believe in outer space (2008), The Returns (2009)  and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s most recent works were developed and  performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces  are prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major  ballet company in the world, including the Mariinsky Ballet, New York  City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Semperoper  Ballet Dresden, England’s Royal Ballet and The Paris Opera Ballet.  

Awards received by Forsythe and his ensembles include the New  York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007) and  London’s Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, 2009). Forsythe has been  conveyed the title of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999) by the  government of France and has received the Hessische Kulturpreis/Hessian  Culture Award (1995), the German Distinguished Service Cross (1997), the  Wexner Prize (2002), the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (2010),  Samuel H Scripps / American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime  Achievement (2012) and the Grand Prix de la SACD (2016).

Forsythe has been commissioned to produce architectural and  performance installations by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind  (Groningen, 1989), ARTANGEL (London,1997), Creative Time (New York,  2005), and the SKD – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013, 2014).   These “Choreographic Objects”, as Forsythe calls his installations,  include among others White Bouncy Castle (1997), City of Abstracts  (2000), The Fact of Matter (2009), Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same  Time No. 2 (2013) and Black Flags (2014). His installation and film  works have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including  the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997), Festival d’Avignon (2005, 2011),  Louvre Museum (2006),  Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006), 21_21  Design Sight in Tokyo (2007), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus  (2009), Tate Modern (London, 2009), Hayward Gallery, (London 2010), MoMA  (New York 2010), ICA Boston (2011), Venice Biennale (2005, 2009, 2012,  2014), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, 2015) and the  20th Biennale of Sydney, 2016.

In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe  has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and  education. His 1994 computer application Improvisation Technologies: A  Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, developed with the ZKM / Zentrum für  Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, is used as a teaching tool by  professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, postgraduate  architecture programs, and secondary schools worldwide. 2009 marked the  launch of Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, a digital  online score developed with The Ohio State University that reveals the  organizational principles of the choreography and demonstrates their  possible application within other disciplines. Synchronous Objects was  the pilot project for Forsythe's Motion Bank, a research platform  focused on the creation and research of online digital scores in  collaboration with guest choreographers.

As an educator, Forsythe is regularly invited to lecture and  give workshops at universities and cultural institutions. In 2002,  Forsythe was chosen as one the founding Dance Mentor for The Rolex  Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at  the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary  Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. Forsythe is a current  Professor of Dance and Artistic Advisor for the Choreographic Institute  at the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.

Source : Forsythe Company Website

More information :

Forsythe Company website

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).

The DANCE ON ENSEMBLE embodies our central aim: to show how dance as an art form benefits from experienced dancers.

Whereas only young bodies are associated with beauty and virtuosity  on stage, DANCE ON is formulating what will hopefully be a trend-setting  perspective for the development and presentation of the artistic  potential of mature dancers. The added physical intelligence, confidence  and expressiveness of the latter arise from lived experience. In  addition to sound knowledge of numerous dance techniques and  choreographic styles, mature dancers also have in-depth awareness of the  impact of their own bodies in movement.

As from 2019 Ty Boomershine will be responsible for upcoming artistic direction of the DANCE ON ENSEMBLE.