As an American working internationally for the last thirty years, William Forsythe is recognized as one of the world’s foremost choreographers. His work is celebrated for reorienting the practice of ballet from its identification with classical repertoire into a dynamic 21st-century art form. Raised and principally trained in New York, Forsythe arrived on the European dance scene in his early 20s as a dancer and eventually as Resident Choreographer of the Stuttgart Ballett. At the same time he also created new works for ballet companies around the world. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as Director of the Frankfurt Ballett where he created many of the most celebrated dance works of our time. Forsythe’s choreography and his companies’ performances have won overwhelming audience acclaim and the most prestigious awards the field has to offer. After the closure of the Frankfurt Ballett in 2004, Forsythe established a new, more independent ensemble – The Forsythe Company. Forsythe’s most recent creations are developed and performed exclusively by the new company while his previous work is prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major ballet company in the world.

In 1994, Forsythe virtually reinvented the teaching of dance with his pioneering and award-winning computer application „Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye“ which is used by professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, post-graduate architecture programs and secondary schools. As an educator, Forsythe is regularly invited to lecture and give workshops at major universities and cultural institutions internationally. He served as the first Mentor in Dance in the inaugural cycle of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative and currently co-directs and teaches in the Dance Apprentice Network aCross Europe (D.A.N.C.E.) program. Forsythe has been awarded an honorary fellowship from the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School in New York.