Simone Forti
1935–
Simone Forti is a dancer, choreographer, and artist whose pioneering work with the body established her as a leading figure among a group of innovators who redefined the language of dance in the 1960s. Following her early work with the choreographers Anna Halprin, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham, she became an important presence in the Judson Dance Theater in New York, influencing its direction through her Dance Constructions. Forti’s pared-down language of movement paralleled that of the Minimalists with whom she had a close dialogue, engaging the idea of form in iconic performative works such as Huddle from 1961. She also created a series of Happenings with Robert Whitman and developed a choreographic language based on the fluid, instinctive movements of children and animals.
In the mid-1970s, Forti made a series of cylindrical holographic sculptures on the curved surfaces of which dance movements appear, animated by viewers moving around them. One of these works, Striding Crawling, balances an eighteen- inch-high plexiglass cylinder on top of three bricks, in the center of which a small candle burns. This sole source of light illuminates a delicate hologram of Forti, whose single, fluid movement from striding to crawling can be seen only if the viewer circumnavigates the sculpture. The low installation height of the hologram forces the viewer to stoop when circling the cylinder, echoing Forti’s own movement, which she derived from t’ai chi and observing animals at the zoo. The light of the candle throws large shadows of the sculpture and the viewer’s movements onto the walls of the darkened room, creating a magical environment of movement, light, and shadow in which Forti shifts the viewer’s position from that of a passive observer to an active participant in the dance.
Introduction
Simone Forti (born March 25, 1935) is an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. Since the 1950s, she has exhibited, performed, and taught workshops all over the world. Her innovations in Postmodern dance, including her seminal 1961 body of work, Dance Constructions, along with her contribution to the early Fluxus movement, have influenced many notable dancers and artists. Forti first apprenticed with Anna Halprin in the 1950s and has since worked alongside artists and composers Nam June Paik, Steve Paxton, La Monte Young, Trisha Brown, Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, Dan Graham, Yoshi Wada, Robert Morris and others. Forti's published books include Handbook in Motion (1974, The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), Angel (1978, self-published), and Oh Tongue (2003, Beyond Baroque Foundation, ed. Fred Dewey), reprinted by Nero Editions, Rome, in 2023, and New Book (2024), published by Nero Editions. She is currently represented by The Box L.A. in Los Angeles, CA, and has works in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Generali Foundation in Vienna, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Wikidata identifier
Q3484563
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 27, 2025.
Introduction
Influential choreographer of postmodern dance from the 1960s. She attended the Dance Workshop of Anna Halprin, studied with Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Ellis Dunn.
Roles
Artist, choreographer, musician
ULAN identifier
500351723
Names
Simone Forti
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 27, 2025.
