Media-Bodies: Choreography as Intermedial Thinking Through in the Work of William Forsythe

Abstract

Since Ballet Frankfurt was reconstituted as the Forsythe Company in 2004, William Forsythe has increasingly explored formats of installation art practice. Works such asHuman Writes(in collaboration with Kendall Thomas, 2005) andYou made me a monster(2005) develop within an interactive and intermedial space and experiment with new ways to experience the production and perception of movement. “Performance installation” is the new term for this intertwined process of movement production and movement perception. The choreographic composition itself grows out of procedures of performative sensing by the dancers, which spreads to onlookers. This multiplex awareness of movement for which the dancer's body is the medium constitutes what I shall call the “media-body” as an essential moment of performance installation as choreographic event. Compared to earlier Forsythe installations—which he called “choreographic objects”—likeWhite Bouncy Castle(1997),City of Abstracts(2000), orScattered Crowd(2002), with their accessible spaces of movement (inWhite Bouncy Castlethe spectator was a visitor moving about freely inside a white inflatable castle, andCity of Abstractsfeatured choreographic projections of movement on large screens in open spaces) performance installations take place squarely in the theatrical context: in theater lobbies, exhibit halls, or accessible public performance spaces where dancers and the audience come together in a mutually shared yet operationally divided space that leads them into an interactive relationship.