Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Simone Forti, 2018.

Author

Forti, Simone

Publication

2018.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Holmes, K. J.

Description

3 streaming files (approximately 3 hours and 6 minutes) : digital +

Summary

• Streaming audio file 1 (approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes). Simone Forti speaks with K.J. Holmes about a recent performance at the Castelli Gallery, in particular the environment created by Robert Morris for the performance; her need to interact with other physical objects when moving and how this relates to her improvisations; (briefly) Robert Morris including their marriage and some of their artistic collaborations; her satisfaction in doing push-pull improvisation exercises with Carmela Hermann; her work See saw including teaching it; how perceptions by the performers of her Dance constructions (for example, her work Huddle) have changed since she first taught them; recent (video) works: Zuma news, Flag in the water, and A free consultation; her work Sleeves; her company [Simone Forti & Troupe] including K.J. Holmes' reminiscences of her time dancing with the troupe; the News animation works including their origins and various sources of inspiration; reasons she no longer wants to make them including her change in focus from specific events to broader societal trends; Forti responds to a passage about the relationship of ancestry and divinity, as quoted by Holmes from a letter Forti wrote to Anna Halprin (published in Radical bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955-1972, c. 2017); speaks about a recent collaboration with the musician Charlemagne Palestine; how the stock character of the fool who speaks truth to power is embodied in her work; they disucss how this character relates to the role of the artist; Forti speaks about her ethnic and Sephardic Jewish background including an anecdote about her father; her mother's family's background.
• Streaming audio file 2 (approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes). Simone Forti speaks with K.J. Holmes about her time as a CalArts [California Institute of the Arts] "groupie"; her attending the Woodstock Music Festival and subsequent year living communally in the Woodstock (N.Y.) area before she went to California; more on her time at CalArts; leaving CalArts for Nova Scotia to write her book (Handbook in motion, c. 1974) and eventually moving to Vermont; moving back to Los Angeles to spend time with her mother; the friendship and support she has found in Los Angeles, in particular her relationship with The Box L.A. gallery; living at Mad Brook Farm in Vermont and her feeling that she was not skilled at collaborative living as practiced in Vermont; living in an artist loft in Soho in New York City including an anecdote about an on-site work by Yoshi Wada; her current state of health, in particular coping with Parkinson's disease; her reasons for trying to distance herself from the Dance constructions; more on her recent performance of a News animation at the Castelli Gallery; her thoughts on her relationship with the universe including the dilemma of caring about what happens versus accepting what happens; Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen and learning to watch animals; Min Tanaka and her admiration for his work; equanimity or what she describes as a balance of emotion (rather than the presence of emotion) in her work; in illustration of this point, Forti tells an anecdote about how [Mikhail] Baryshnikov put on a shoe in Steven Paxton's PastForward; her use of split-seconds of violence in her work to illustrate consciousness of life's precariousness; her book The bear in the mirror (published in 2019); distinguishing the label "choreographer" from how she and her peers view themselves; her feelings about a mountain brook as comparable to her feelings about her father.
• Streaming audio file 3 (approximately 47 minutes). Simone Forti speaks with K.J. Holmes about performing Tea for three with Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton at The Box L.A. Gallery in Los Angeles, California and in New York, in particular, how differently she felt about the performances in the two venues; her reflections on why she feels less motivated to travel and explore than formerly; her work with Jeremiah Day, both past and the upcoming News animations; her relationship with Carmela Hermann; their recent performance of Forti's See Saw; Forti's singing; her uncertainty as to where she is heading artistically in the near future; her desire to become more physically active; her hologram works, including the process of filming them with the holographer Lucas Cross; the current exhibition of these works, mounted in plexiglas, at The Box L. A. Gallery; two other recent shows of her works at the L.A. Box Gallery, entitled The iron post and Sounding, respectively; the influence on her new work of Pierre Huyge's show at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art); Holmes speaks about an image she has of Forti as a leader who moves at her own pace.

Alternative Title

• Dance oral history project
• Dance audio archive

Subjects

• Palestine, Charlemagne
• Dance > Political aspects
• Morris, Robert, 1931-2018
• Huddle (Choreographic work : Forti)
• Artistic collaboration
• Forti, Simone > Interviews
• Postmodern dance > United States
• Dance in motion pictures, television, etc
• News animations (Choreographic work : Forti)
• Sound recordings
• Dance > Social aspects
• Oral histories
• Day, Jeremiah
• Dance and technology

Genre/Form

• Sound recordings.
• Oral histories.

Note

• Interview with Simone Forti conducted by K.J. Holmes, on February 13, 2018, at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Project. An earlier interview (1994), conducted by Louise Sunshine for the Oral History Project, is cataloged in the Library's collection under the call numbers: *MGZTC 3-1844 (audio) and *MGZMT 3-1844 (transcript).
• For transcript see *MGZMT 3-3467.
• As of March 2023, the audio recording of this interview can be made available at the Library for the Performing Arts by advanced request to the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, dance@nypl.org. The audio files for this interview are undergoing processing and eventually will be available for streaming.
• Sound quality is good.
• Title supplied by cataloger.

Access (note)

• Transcripts may be photographed or reproduced for non-commerical uses only.

Funding (note)

• The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3467

OCLC

1098060026

Author

Forti, Simone, interviewee.

Title

Interview with Simone Forti, 2018.

Imprint

2018.

Type of Content

spoken word

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

audio

Type of Carrier

online resource

volume

Digital File Characteristics

audio file

Restricted Access

Transcripts may be photographed or reproduced for non-commerical uses only.

Event

Recorded for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts February 13, 2018 New York (N.Y.)

Funding

The creation and cataloging of this recording was made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The support of the National Endowment for the Arts is also gratefully acknowledged.

Connect to:

Added Author

Holmes, K. J., interviewer.

Research Call Number

*MGZMT 3-3467