William Forsythe (°1949) grew up in New York, where he also received most of his dance training. At age twenty he moved to Europe and became the Stuttgart Ballet’s resident choreographer. At the same time, he composed new work for ballet companies in Munich, The Hague, London, Basel, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, New York and San Francisco. He directed the Frankfurt Ballet from 1984 to 2004, during which time he created some of the most celebrated dance theatre performances of our time, such as The Loss of Small Detail (1991).

After the Frankfurt Ballet closed in 2004, Forsythe established a new company, based in Frankfurt and Dresden: The Forsythe Company. While his new work is performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, his earlier work is now part of the repertoire of nearly every major ballet company in the world.

William Forsythe is unanimously recognised as one of the world's most prominent contemporary dance choreographers. He has freed ballet from its classical conventions to turn it into an eminently dynamic art, in step with the 21st century. His vision of choreography emerged from a dialogue with the main artistic movements of our time, from performance and visual arts to architecture and interactive multimedia.