It’s time for Simone Forti to be recognized for her lifetime of trailblazing in the world of dance, theater, and conceptual arts. The Watermill Center honored Forti at its annual gala with tribute performances staged continuously throughout the evening on the ten-acre forest in the Hamptons. Forti could not attend in person but watched via live stream as she was celebrated by the 750+ attendees at the benefit.
Simone Forti has been a pioneer in the fields of dance, visual art, and conceptual art. Her philosophy is that creating performance pieces where the concept or idea for the art is just as important as the execution of the art is the basis for most of her work. Ms. Forti has worked as a dancer, choreographer, artist, and writer.
Forti has appeared in venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Louvre Museum, Paris; and Danspace, New York. She has
had solo exhibitions at Centro Pecci, Prato; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan; Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich; Kunstmuseum, Bonn; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and her first major retrospective at the Museum der Moderne and Salzburg. Forti’s artwork is in collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Generali Foundation, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. Forti has received various awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in dance, and a Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts, and Biennale Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance in 2023.
Based in Los Angles, Forti works on worldwide projects with Sarah Swenson. Sarah Swenson is an American modern dance choreographer, dancer, and teacher who has been the International Project Coordinator and principal stager for Forti’s 1960s opus Dance Constructions. Sarah Swenson restaged four distinguished works by Forti with a dozen performers from the New York City Ballet, Broadway, and performance art arenas.
The works staged for the event were created in the 1960s and 1970s and recreated, taught, and studied by performers, choreographers, and scholars over the last fifty years. The pieces selected and performed for the benefit included Huddle, Censor, Landscape Partners, and Scramble. The Watermill benefit performers were Eva Alt, Eliza Blutt, Caroline Breton, Bonnie Comley, Mikayla Durham, Savannah Durham, Jonathan Fahoury, Xuetong Feng, Kennard Henson, Marianna Kavallieratos, Sorin Prodea, Ava Sautter, and Demiân White.
The Watermill Center, founded in 1992 by theater and visual artist Robert Wilson, fosters research in the arts of the stage, providing emerging artists with a unique environment for creation and exploration in theater and all its related art forms and developing a robust global network transcending age, experience, and social, religious, and cultural backgrounds. The Watermill Center supports projects that integrate different genres and art forms, break with traditional forms of representation, and develop democratic and cross-cultural approaches.
For more information on The Watermill Center, see: www.watermillcenter.org
