TODAY 45 YEARS AGO, William Forsythe's Urlicht premiered. It was the very first piece of the choreographer who was to revolutionise ballet in the following decades. He created Urlicht for the Young Choreographers' Evening of the Noverre Society, a Stuttgart based platform where young dancers could try their hand at the art of choreography. For his choreographic debut Forsythe, then still a dancer of the Stuttgart ballet, used the alto solo from Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony and created a pas de deux for himself and Eileen Brady. The short piece revealed so much potential that the then director of the Stuttgart Ballet, Marcia Haydée, appointed Forsythe resident choreographer. In his further pieces for the company, his ground-breaking style became apparent: he experimented and deconstructed the classical vocabulary in order to develop new forms of movement.

Photo: Laura O'Malley and Jason Reilly dancing Urlicht in 2007, © Stuttgart Ballet