Two Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement for the Dance and Music sectors of the Biennale di Venezia: the awards have been made to the American choreographer, William Forsythe, a leading figure and inspiration for dance since the 1990s, and to the German composer, Wolfgang Rihm, whose works are frequently performed at home and abroad.

 

The awards made to William Forsythe and Wolfgang Rihm were suggested by directors Ismael Ivo for dance and Luca Francesconi for music, and today approved by the Board of Directors of the Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta.

The awards ceremony for the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement in Dance will take place during the 7th International Festival of Contemporary Dance (26th May – 12th June, 2010); that for Music during the 54th International Festival of Contemporary Music (23rd September – 2nd October, 2010).

 

In past years, the Dance award was made to Merce Cunningham (1995), Carolyn Carlson (2006), Pina Bausch (2007) and Jirí Kylián (2008), while the Music award has gone to Goffredo Petrassi (1994), Luciano Berio (1995), Friedrich Cerha (2006), Giacomo Manzoni (2007), Helmut Lachenmann (2008) and György Kurtág (2009).

 

“A total artist, William Forsythe has revolutionised the world of dance”, states the motivation for the award, “regenerating classical language, of which he has reconstructed and deconstructed the forms from within, becoming a point of reference for younger generations, and contributing to shape new talents in that incubator of new talents that is the Ballet Frankfurt, for the past 20 years and now at the Forsythe Company. Highly sought-after by theatres and companies around the world, the New-York-born William Forsythe, who has chosen to live in Germany, is an artist who undergoes constant renewal, and is able to surprise his audience with projects revealing continuous changes, which explore the explorable, cross the thresholds of theatre to draw in other disciplines and reaffirm the role of dance in the development of contemporary art”.

It is with the installation entitled You Made Me a Monster that Forsythe came to the Biennale di Venezia for the first time, invited by the dance director, Ismael Ivo, to inaugurate the 3rd International Festival of Contemporary Dance in 2005. Forsythe returned to the Biennale last year, but this time invited to the 53rd International Art Exhibition by its director, Daniel Birnbaum, with an installation, The Fact of Matter/Choreographic Object, which evidences the complexity and breadth of this artist’s activities.

 

 

“An extremely precocious talent”, states the motivation for the award, “Wolfgang Rihm has witnessed the great changes in almost 40 years of recent musical history, absorbing without ideological rigidity the most important developments of the era, themes that are as topical as ever. Rihm accepted the challenge of the most urgent expressive developments that exploded in the 1970s with the end of modernism, fighting with intellectual honesty and courage against the spectres of rational dogma and subsequently of post-modern cynicism; for instance, by reviving the lessons of Nono as of the early 1990s.
Striving strongly towards a balance between expression and rigour, which is the most profound nucleus of the truest art. The music of Wolfgang Rihm is always rooted in the matter of sound, in rhythmic and harmonic force, with a lucid formal organisation often on a vast scale.”

Rihm’s first presence at the Biennale dates from 1981, for the significantly named “After the avant-garde” series. Another memorable occasion was the world premiere of In-Schrift for orchestra of 1995, performed in the basilica in Saint Mark’s square, for which the score was written, using orchestral instruments best able to exploit its acoustic possibilities.

 

 

 

William Forsythe (New York, 1949) - After growing up in New York and training initially in Florida with Nolan Dingman and Christa Long, Forsythe danced with the Joffrey Ballet and later with the Stuttgart Ballet, where he was nominated choreographer in residence in 1976. During the seven subsequent years, he created new works for the Stuttgart company and for the ballet companies of Munich, the Hague, London, Basle, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, New York and San Francisco. In 1984, at the age of 35, he became director of the Frankfurt Ballet, for which he created works such as Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb's Theorem (1990), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), ALIE/NA(C)TION (1992), Eidos: Telos (1995), Endless House (1999), Kammer/Kammer (2000), and Decreation (2003). Following the closure of the Frankfurt Ballet in 2004, Forsythe created a new and more independent company. The Forsythe Company, founded with the support of the Saxony region, the cities of Dresden and Frankfurt-am-Main and private backers, is based in Dresden and Frankfurt-am-Main. Among the works produced for the new company are Three Atmospheric Studies (2005), You Made me a Monster(2005), Human Write (2005), Heterotopia (2006), The Defenders (2007), Yes we can’t (2008), and I Don't Believe in Outer Space (2008). Forsythe’s most recent works are created and performed exclusively by The Forsythe Company, while his earlier works are present in the repertoire of some of the most important dance companies in the world, including The Kirov Ballet, The New York City Ballet, The San Francisco Ballet, il National Ballet of Canada, il Royal Ballet, and The Paris Opera Ballet.

Among the awards and prizes he has won are: the New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award (1988, 1998, 2004, 2007) and the Laurence Olivier Award (1992, 1999, 2009).

Forsythe has also been commissioned for architectural and performance installations by architect and artist Daniel Libeskind, Artangel (London), Creative Time (New York), and the city of Paris. His installation works and films have been presented in numerous museums and exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennale (New York), the Biennale di Venezia, the Musée du Louvre, 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and the Wexner Center in Ohio.

 

Wolfang Rihm (Karlsruhe, Germany 1952) - A pupil of composition at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe under Eugen Werner Velte (1968-72), he continued his training in Cologne under Karlheinz Stockhausen (1972-73) and at Freiburg under Klaus Huber (1973–76). He also graduated in musicology from the University of Freiburg under Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. His first visit to Darmstadt for the Internationalen Ferienkurse Für Neue Musik dates from 1970; he became a lecturer there in 1978. After having been a guest artist at the German Academy at Villa Massimo in Rome, from 1981 he began teaching for a brief period in Munich, before taking the post of professor of composition at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe. Winner of the Fondation Prince Pierre di Monaco prize, of the Bach-Preis of Hamburg, and of the Royal Philharmonic Society and Ernst von Siemens, prizes, Rihm has also been resident composer at the festivals of Salzburg, Strasbourg and Lucerne.

A precocious talent – his first compositions date from his early childhood (1963) – and a prolific one, with a vast catalogue (supposedly comprising 400 works), during the course of his career, he has composed works of opera, orchestral pieces, vocal and choral pieces, chamber and piano music. Among the operas that have made him one of the leading figures in this field are Jakob Lenz (1977-78), opera da camera, still today one of the most frequently performed in Germany; Die Hamletmaschine (1983-86) with libretto by Heiner Müller; Die Eroberung von Mexico (1987-1991) by Antonin Artaud; Séraphin (1994). Among his vocal and instrumental woks, the cycle of the Chiffre for ensemble and the Klangbeschreibung for orchestra; his rich catalogue of quartets for strings; the violin concerto Gesungene Zeit, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter with the Chicago Simphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine; Frau/Stimme (1988-89) for voices and orchestra; Jagden und Formen (2000). Some of his most recent works include an opera, Das Gehege (2006), from the play by Botho Strauss, Schlusschor, and a monodrama, Proserpina (2009).