By Lucas Justinien Perez
March 10, 2025
For 50 years William Forsythe has been building a vision of the future of ballet which upends the norms and expectations of classical ballet by intersecting its historical fundamentals with postmodern improvisation, experimental footwear and music, and immersive technologies which challenge audiences to question their understanding of what makes a ballet. To honor this lifetime of achievement and tremendously influential contributions to the world of dance, he’s been awarded the Kyoto Prize for Arts and Philosophy as a 2024 Kyoto Prize Laureate alongside Theoretical Physicist John Pendry for Advanced Technology, and Geologist, Paul F. Hoffman for the Basic Sciences category.
As part of a line-up of programming beginning at the award ceremony in Kyoto, Japan, Forsythe is coming to San Diego for the annual Kyoto Prize Symposium hosted by the University of California- San Diego (UCSD), and Point Loma Nazarene University to deliver a lecture entitled “Sometimes I Kiss Flowers” March 13th at the Price Center East Ballroom at UCSD. His talk will focus on his development and growth in the arts and as a choreographer through the metaphoric framing of a landscape and his life-long interest in the natural world and the nature of reality.
The Kyoto Prize is an annual international award founded by Japanese philanthropist, Kyocera founder, and Buddhist Priest Kazuo Inamori in 1984 to honor individuals who’ve made “extraordinary contributions to science, civilization, and the spirituality of humankind.” The prize is awarded to laureates within three categories including Advanced Technology, Basic Sciences, and Art and Philosophy. Winners of this vaulted prize are presented with a 20k gold medal, a diploma with a calligraphic inscription, and 100 million yen ($600,000) in prize money.
Forsythe’s career began in 1969 studying at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, then moving to Germany to dance with the Stuttgart Ballet where he choreographed his first work “Urlicht” (Primal Light) in 1976. This piece solidified his role in the world of dance as an experimental choreographer and catapulted him into the appointed role of Director of the Frankfurt Ballet, a position he held for 20 years, leaving in 2005 to start his own group, the Forsythe Company. Forsythe has developed and collaborated on innumerable projects with a global reach, once stating of his role: “Choreographers should be capable of harnessing what’s important—the aspects of craft, which locates it in the historical trajectory of classicism—while being able to recontextualize it to a degree that it has contemporary relevance (Bomb Magazine, 2006).
24th Annual Kyoto Prize Symposium
March 11 – 13, 2025
