BREAKING #323

What matters here is focus

Column

June 2026

is a writer, art historian, and founder of See All This art magazine. Since 2020, she writes a weekly column for the BREAKING-the-week art newsletter.

Column

June 2026

No hidden message, no mission statement: ‘What matters here is focus. A focus directed towards your body and the movements it performs within a limited set of circumstances.’ Choreographer William Forsythe takes us by the hand at Voorlinden museum, where his Choreographic Objects are installed, ready to challenge and interrogate us physically.

‘I am an artist,’ the 76-year-old Forsythe tells me in an interview* ahead of the opening, ‘and choreography is the domain of my artistic practice. On stage, the choreographic body is enhanced by light and music, but I have come to the happy realization that bodies alone are enough, because they are the primary point of connection with another person.’

The paint on the gallery walls is still drying and we, a group of journalists more accustomed to observing than participating, linger along the edges like wallflowers. Yet these spatial installations are invasive: they enter the body through their irresistible demand for participation – crawling, hanging, dancing and walking backwards in a straight line with your eyes closed.

If you surrender yourself to the will of the intelligent master – who turns your body into his medium – you are confronted with your relationship to your own body and to the bodies of others. The result is a breathtaking kinetic artwork (kinesis meaning movement) in which everyone encounters themselves and each other through moments of glorious failure and triumph.

The New York-based Forsythe was encouraged throughout his life by the Amsterdam choreographer Hans van Manen (1932). ‘He was my biggest cheerleader and insisted that I keep pushing my boundaries.’ Forsythe still becomes emotional when he thinks about their last exchange. ‘Six months ago he wrote to me: “Hi Darling, I’m dying.”’

While Hans van Manen distilled ballet to clarity and precision, Forsythe has driven it towards greater complexity, speed and instability. What has the body taught him over all those years? That it is constantly trying to communicate with us. Most of us only listen when it hurts, he says. ‘But you and your body are going into the grave together, so pay attention to this partner, who is so devoted to you.’

William Forsythe: ‘The body never lied to me’, interview in See All This #42. Pre-order here.

William Forsythe – Choreographic Objects is on view at Voorlinden museum in Wassenaar through 23 August 2026. In this interactive exhibition, the world-renowned choreographer invites visitors to move, participate and engage with the works – although simply looking is perfectly acceptable too. Afterwards, see Anouk Kruithof’s video installation Universal Tongue, composed of videos found on social media featuring a thousand different kinds of dance from 196 countries.