No-one will ever accuse the American-born choreographer William Forsythe, based in Germany since the seventies, of taking the easy way – to the contrary, he is a master of complexity.
Tag - Artifact
This is the third mounting of the work since its première in 1976 at the Avignon Festival, where it quickly became the stuff of legend. What was this strange, endlessly-repetitive, oddly compelling work?
In 1984 Fosythe's vocabulary was much more strongly rooted in ballet: though it is spikily aggressive and legs are flung upwards over beyond the perpendicular, it is not as twisted and distorted as it later became. It is cool, rigorous, fiercely disciplined and blazing with adrenalin.
27 Pictures by Dave Morgan