Balé sob outros eixos: contextos e investigações do coreógrafo norte-americano William Forsythe (1949) entre 1984 e 1994

Abstract

This dissertation aims at discussing the contexts and the reformulations on the vocabulary for the ballet proposed by the North American choreographer William Forsythe (1949), from the decades of 1980 to 1990. The excerpt delimited on the research is within the period which Forsythe directed the Frankfurt Ballet, in Germany. He has been considered an important revitalizer of the patterns of traditional ballet by many art and dance critics as well as by historians. For a better understanding of the trajectory and importance of Forsythe in the transformation of this dance, I first present some of the problems of the uncritical historic discussion of ballet. Following that I point out how ballet has raised aesthetical and political provocations about its performing up to the context of the subject here being investigated – William Forsythe. Next I investigate the social, political and artistic constructions which are designed by this choreographer in order to develop his references about the conception, performing and composing of ballet in the contemporaneity. In this perspective I also investigate the material that registers this period of his career: the CD-ROM Improvisation Technologies. I present the organization of the CD together with the description and analyses of the technology and the studies developed in the field of Labanian Choreutics as well as the description and analyses of all of the categories presented in its first edition, which has influenced the creation of the material. This work problematizes ballet as a web of meanings of our time, presenting the dancer as researcher of his choreographic practice.