In “William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects”—an exhibition highlighting interactive sculptures by the celebrated Vermont choreographer—you’re invited to try to cross a room filled with swinging pendulums without getting bumped. Or to pull open a very difficult door. Or to swing across a room via 600 gymnastic rings suspended from the ceiling by straps.
The exhibition—on view at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art from Oct. 31, 2018, to Feb. 21, 2019—is like an experimental dance instruction course, full of exercises that direct you toward certain movements. “To engage participants in the fundamentals of choreography,” says ICA curator Eva Respini, who organized the exhibition with assistant curator Jeffrey De Blois.
But Forsythe also talks about the pieces as social-political metaphors. “Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, No. 3,” 2015, that room of 80 swinging pendulums, is, he says, “a composition that you’re allowed to enter, but the only rule is you do not come into contact with any of the pendulums or disturb the composition. It’s not possible to go through without some shift in your observational state.”
But, Forsythe says, it’s also about “avoiding getting hit.”
A sign next to that stiff door, “Aufwand” (German for “effort”), 2015, reads: “If you encounter difficulty opening the door, please persist.” Forsythe quips, “This is a message to Elizabeth Warren.” But he notes seriously that it’s also one of his pieces exploring “inhibition of motion. Look at immigration right now. If you take it apart and look at its components, it’s about keeping people from moving.”
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Forsythe was born in New York in 1949 and danced with the Joffrey Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed resident choreographer in 1976. He went on to become the director of Ballet Frankfurt from 1984 to 2004. Beginning with dances like “Artifact,” 1984, he became renowned for choreographing post-modern ballets that deconstructed and isolated the art’s traditional vocabulary of movements and then reassembled them in fresh, surprising ways. His style is also remarkable for foregrounding the effort and athleticism of his dancers—aspects traditionally hidden by ballerinas. After Ballet Frankfurt shut down in 2004, he launched and directed The Forsythe Company from 2005 to 2015. He’s currently working with the Boston Ballet during a five-year residency.
Respini, referring to Forsythe as “the Michael Jordan of the ballet world,” says his interactive works aim “to explore the social and psychological roles of the body.”
“The Differential Room,” 2018, is a room filled with chalkboards covered with complicated instructions for different movements. One reads: “Standing on one leg/raise the heel/of the standing foot/as high as possible and maintain/that position/while hopping/until complete exhaustion/but not expressing/that exhaustion/or drawing any/attention to/yourself.”
“This is ‘Giselle,’ first act,” the 19th century French ballet, Forsythe says. “This is a common task for ballerinas. The whole point is effort. It takes a tremendous amount of effort, years and years. … On the other hand, they’re required to express no effort, no difficulty, no pain.”
Then he extended the ballet’s usual choreography into a social metaphor: “What about people stuck between a rock and a hard place. You have two kids, two jobs, no partner and you’re not supposed to show it,” Forsythe says. “It’s not possible to some degree. People do it, they manage, but they suffer.”
“Never Cease Knotting,” 2018, is a shelf of big rubberbands that you’re instructed to try knotting. “We assume that these things are made for us,” Forsythe says. “What happens when you encounter something that is uncooperative. … Have a relationship with something that is not designed to make it easier for you.”
“There are people who do things all day on bands that are very tiring and they are given no relief to that,” Forsythe says. “It is a metaphor.”
“The works don’t exclude political metaphors,” Forsythe tells me. “It’s always been in there and people always want to focus on the individual experience when it could be about a larger collective motion.”
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