This is a full circle moment. William Forsythe is regarded as one of the most important choreographers of the late 20th century – and rightly so. His innovative approach to the tradition of ballet has allowed dance to go down paths that would otherwise have been difficult to imagine. From 1984 to 2004, Forsythe directed the Ballett Frankfurt and from 2005 to 2015 The Forsythe Company, which was later renamed Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company. Ioannis Mandafounis, the current artistic director of the company, was a dancer with Forsythe for several years and is therefore clearly influenced by him.

Live choreography, the improvisation methodology with which the company works today, builds on many of the principles developed by Forsythe and takes the paradigm of improvisation one step further. Now, this radicalised movement practice meets the artistic signature from which it once emerged. What will be created within this special connection?

William Forsythe

William Forsythe has been active in the field of choreography for over 50 years. His work is acknowledged for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire to a dynamic 21st century art form. Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed Resident Choreographer in 1976. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the Ballet Frankfurt after which he founded and directed The Forsythe Company until 2015. Forsythe's deep interest in the fundamental principles of organisation of choreography has led him to produce a wide range of projects including installations, films, and web-based knowledge creation. While his work for the stage resides in the repertoire of ensembles worldwide, his installations are presented internationally in exhibitions and museums. Forsythe has been the recipient of numerous awards, which include the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale and DER FAUST German Theatre Award, both for lifetime achievement.

For Thomas Hauert, improvisation is not primarily a means of expressing oneself, but rather a means of creating and composing movements. Is it possible to free the body from the limits of thought? If you let it, it will find more complex and exciting movements than your brain could come up with.

Hauert founded the company ZOO at the end of the 90s. With a relatively constant constellation of dancers throughout, he has been exploring the tension between freedom and restriction in dance ever since. When dancers improvise together in a group, they have to find a new way of dealing with control. Improvisation can be very purposeful, it can give a group a common focus for their practice. Tasks, rules and restrictions can disrupt the conditioning of the body in such a way that something unexpected emerges. Freedom and resistance, individual and group, order and disorder, formlessness and form.

Thomas Hauert

Thomas Hauert founded his company ZOO in Brussels in 1998. ‘Cows in Space’ was his first piece, which was immediately honoured at the Rencontres de Seine-Saint-Denis/Bagnolet. Since then, the company has developed more than 21 pieces. In addition to his work for ZOO, Hauert has been a guest choreographer for the Zurich Ballet, Toronto Dance Theatre, Candoco Dance Company, Ballet Junior de Genève and the Ballet de Lorraine, among others. Inspired by his choreographic work, Hauert developed an internationally recognised teaching method based on his movement research with ZOO. Since 2013, he has been the artistic director of the Bachelor's programme in contemporary dance at La Manufacture, the Lausanne School of Performing Arts.