by Dagmara Genda // Aug. 11, 2026
This article is part of our feature topic Play.
William Forsythe’s ‘Choreographic Objects’ provides the audience with a veritable fun house in which they can jump, crawl, balance precariously above the floor or, in other words, play. But unlike the other shows in the Instagram-friendly Museum Voorlinden, it is easy to forgive Forsythe’s photogenic appeal. It escapes the trap of gimmick, or what critic Ben Davis once called “big fun art,” which threads through the private museum’s collection. Examples include ‘Swimming Pool’ (2016) by Leonardo Erlich, which offers visitors a chance to walk at the bottom of a pool and be photographed as if underwater. A giant hyperrealistic sun-bathing couple by Ron Mueck, and Maurizio Cattelan’s admittedly not so big but just as fun tiny elevators are natural publicity showpieces whose inversions of scale are perfect for photographic trickery akin to the photos of tourists holding up the leaning tower of Pisa. But Forsythe can be forgiven for his social media appeal, because he implicates the visitor as an active, decision-making subject and not just a curatorial prop.
William Forsythe: ‘Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time,’ 2015, plumb bobs, string, dimensions variable // Courtesy of the artist, photo © Peter Hamelinck
Forsythe is led by a deeply curious, and very serious, commitment to exploratory movement and play, which he has often used as a means to deconstruct the history and practice of ballet. In his choreography, he provides classically-trained dancers with information according to which they make decisions on stage. The result is a series of (albeit virtuosic) variations, rather than perfectly fine-tuned products. His installations follow a similar principle. He offers the public propositions, whether through video, architecture or written instructions, to which they then have to react. His work is an invitation for people to become aware of their physical self in space, a nearly radical gesture in a time where not only our attention but our bodies have been coopted by smartphones and video games. The gamification of culture, finance, education, relationships—life itself—has nothing to do with play as much as surveillance, discipline and the monetization of our attention. ‘Choreographic Objects,’ on the other hand, offers spaces that momentarily release the captive public from its corporate instrumentalization. Rather than stealing our attention, Forsythe directs our experience into considering how and why we move through certain spaces, how we habitually use our bodies (both alone and with others), as well as simply inviting us to notice ourselves and others as physical, sensing entities.
William Forsythe: ’A Volume,’ 2015, wood, paint, installation // Courtesy of the artist, photo © Antoine van Kaam
A shift in bodily perception takes place from the very first moment one enters ‘Choreographic Objects.’ ‘A Volume within which it is Not Possible for Certain Classes of Action to Arise’ (2015) is less a room than a passage way. A thick red carpet covers the floor and the ceiling of the center of the room has been lowered to about 1 meter off the floor, thus cutting the room into two parts. On this wall one can read “THE SPACE BELOW MAY BE ENTERED.” Visitors are invited to crawl into the space, move around it, spend time in it, then perhaps come out on the other side. In the meter tall crawl space, where suddenly everyone turns into a child hiding under the table, one can observe the feet of other visitors, walking, pausing, sometimes timidly bending over to see what is hidden under the imposingly lowered architecture. Some quickly get back up. Others descend on their hands and knees, or slither on their bellies and join the grinning lurkers in the lowered, darkened space. Not only the children roll around and squeal with delight—more than anyone, they are perfectly aware of the arbitrariness of our regime of movement and indulge the freedom to break free—but adults are also given permission to deviate from normal codes of behavior.
In ‘City of Abstracts’ (2000), people are filmed and projected with a slight delay on a wall. Any movement of the body produces distortions, which cause people to wave their arms around, bend and lift their legs, as well as jump through the room. In the hallway between shows, a group of people stand around a bench against a wall. They converse, laugh and observe one another. The accompanying instructions on the wall state: “Walk 10 steps away from the bench; then; with your eyes closed; walk backwards and sit down.” A theater of movement is unleashed by this simple instruction. Some people, walking out of the previous room, automatically start walking backwards upon seeing the movement in the next. Though they don’t follow the instructions, they allow themselves to be immersed in an atmosphere of free play, of curious interaction with a space that encourages unconventional movement.
William Forsythe: ‘The Fact of Matter,’ 2009, polycarbonate rings, polyester belts, ground support rigging // Courtesy of the artist, photo © Antoine van Kaam
The most physically demanding work is ‘The Fact of Matter’ (2009), which consists of 350 rings hung at varying heights. The visitor is challenged to cross the room without letting their body touch the floor—a task far more complex than one might initially assume. People spend up to 15 minutes straining, reaching, hanging in order to move their bodies a few centimeters further. Many give up in the middle and earlier. If I am any example of the average participant, many of those felt the uncomfortable presence of muscles they didn’t know they had in the days following. This particularly photogenic work had the effect of suspending the body in a variety of strange, awkward, beautiful poses. A person’s limbs would be pulled in different directions as they attempted to keep their balance and move forward. The predominant emotion in the space was joy, though it was also accompanied by the calculated concentration of those planning their movements across the demanding obstacle course.
William Forsythe: ‘Alignigung,’ 2016, film still, 15:50 min // © Opéra national de Paris (2016), photo © Dominik Mentzos
‘Alignigung’ (2016) was the last work in the show and the only piece not demanding participation. Its presence and position functioned as a reminder that one is indeed in an exhibition space, and that though one just crawled, jumped and laughed, what one was experiencing, and also taking part in, was carefully-considered art. Set to the high-pitched drone of Ryoji Ikeda’s ‘op. 1 (for 9 strings),’ ‘Alignigung’ (which is a word play on the English word “align” and the German “allein”) consists of a video projection of two male dancers entwined into one another against a featureless white background. Their slowly moving bodies look like a geometric form, or a sculpture. The camera slowly shifts, zooms in close, tracks around the pretzeled limbs, then backs out far enough that they appear a small point on a white surface. The bodies shift with the camera, assuming confusing, sometimes seemingly impossible poses. Suspended in a field of white non-space, there is no context for their movements, no reason for their existence other than their very possibility. And that is precisely the task that Forsythe offers his audience—not to engage in habitual or coerced movement based in social conventions, but to give in to a gesture defined by nothing other than its sheer possibility. In other words, Forsythe was imparting to his audience the importance of free play.
Exhibition Info
Museum Voorlinden
William Forsythe: ‘Choreographic Objects’
Exhibition: June 6–Aug. 23, 2026
voorlinden.nl
Buurtweg 90, 2244 AG Wassenaar, Netherlands, click here for map
