For the second time this season, the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine will present a piece by William Forsythe. Entering the company's rep is the major work Duo, which will be accompanied live by the music of Thom Willems, one of the choreographer's principal creative collaborators for many years.

In the small space just in front of the curtain, just at the edge of the stage, is «Duo»,  a clock composed of two dancers. The dancers register time in a spiraling way, make it visible, they think about how it fits into space, they pull time into an intricate, naked pattern and the pattern grows and unfolds as they tumble, shear, strike, reverse. Their bodies brilliant in a shimmer of black, the dancers fly with reckless accuracy, their breath sings of the spaces in time. Distant music appears and vanishes as the dancers follow each other through the whirling, etched quiet. A clock which regards the limitless by returning to where it began.

source : CCN - Ballet de Lorraine

Credits

World premiere January 20, 1996 at the Ballett Frankfurt, Städtische Bühnen Francfort

Premiered by the CCN - Ballet de Lorraine May 12, 2015 at the Opéra national de Lorraine

Choreography : William Forsythe
Music : Thom Willems
Scene, lights & costumes : William Forsythe
Transmission : Cyril Baldy
Rehearsal director : Isabelle Bourgeais

Raised in New York and initially trained in  Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the  Joffrey Ballet and later the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed  Resident Choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, he created  new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and ballet companies in Munich, The  Hague, London, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Paris, New York, and  San Francisco. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of the  Ballet Frankfurt, where he created works such as Artifact (1984),  Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb’s Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small  Detail (1991), A L I E / N A(C)TION (1992), Eidos:Telos (1995), Endless  House (1999), Kammer/Kammer (2000), and Decreation (2003)  

After the closure of the Ballet Frankfurt in 2004, Forsythe  established a new ensemble, The Forsythe Company, which he directed from  2005 to 2015. Works produced with this ensemble include Three  Atmospheric Studies (2005), You made me a monster (2005), Human Writes  (2005), Heterotopia (2006), The Defenders (2007), Yes we can’t  (2008/2010), I don’t believe in outer space (2008), The Returns (2009)  and Sider (2011). Forsythe’s most recent works were developed and  performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier pieces  are prominently featured in the repertoire of virtually every major  ballet company in the world, including the Mariinsky Ballet, New York  City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Semperoper  Ballet Dresden, England’s Royal Ballet and The Paris Opera Ballet.  

Awards received by Forsythe and his ensembles include the New  York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007) and  London’s Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, 2009). Forsythe has been  conveyed the title of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (1999) by the  government of France and has received the Hessische Kulturpreis/Hessian  Culture Award (1995), the German Distinguished Service Cross (1997), the  Wexner Prize (2002), the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale (2010),  Samuel H Scripps / American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime  Achievement (2012) and the Grand Prix de la SACD (2016).

Forsythe has been commissioned to produce architectural and  performance installations by architect-artist Daniel Libeskind  (Groningen, 1989), ARTANGEL (London,1997), Creative Time (New York,  2005), and the SKD – Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013, 2014).   These “Choreographic Objects”, as Forsythe calls his installations,  include among others White Bouncy Castle (1997), City of Abstracts  (2000), The Fact of Matter (2009), Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same  Time No. 2 (2013) and Black Flags (2014). His installation and film  works have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including  the Whitney Biennial (New York, 1997), Festival d’Avignon (2005, 2011),  Louvre Museum (2006),  Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006), 21_21  Design Sight in Tokyo (2007), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus  (2009), Tate Modern (London, 2009), Hayward Gallery, (London 2010), MoMA  (New York 2010), ICA Boston (2011), Venice Biennale (2005, 2009, 2012,  2014), MMK – Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt am Main, 2015) and the  20th Biennale of Sydney, 2016.

In collaboration with media specialists and educators, Forsythe  has developed new approaches to dance documentation, research, and  education. His 1994 computer application Improvisation Technologies: A  Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, developed with the ZKM / Zentrum für  Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, is used as a teaching tool by  professional companies, dance conservatories, universities, postgraduate  architecture programs, and secondary schools worldwide. 2009 marked the  launch of Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, a digital  online score developed with The Ohio State University that reveals the  organizational principles of the choreography and demonstrates their  possible application within other disciplines. Synchronous Objects was  the pilot project for Forsythe's Motion Bank, a research platform  focused on the creation and research of online digital scores in  collaboration with guest choreographers.

As an educator, Forsythe is regularly invited to lecture and  give workshops at universities and cultural institutions. In 2002,  Forsythe was chosen as one the founding Dance Mentor for The Rolex  Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Forsythe is an Honorary Fellow at  the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance in London and holds an Honorary  Doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York. Forsythe is a current  Professor of Dance and Artistic Advisor for the Choreographic Institute  at the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.

Source : Forsythe Company Website

More information :

Forsythe Company website

Since acquiring the CCN title in 1999, the Centre Chorégraphique National - Ballet de Lorraine has dedicated itself to supporting contemporary choreographic creation. As of July 2011 the organization is under the general and artistic direction of Petter Jacobsson.
The CCN – Ballet de Lorraine and its company of 26 dancers is one of the most important companies working in Europe, performing contemporary creations while retaining and programming a rich and extensive repertory, spanning our modern history, made up of works by some of our generations most highly regarded choreographers.
The CCN functions as an art center and venue for multiple possibilities in the fields of research, experimentation and artistic creation. It is a platform open to many different disciplines, a space where the many visions of dance of today may meet. 

More information : http://ballet-de-lorraine.eu