Simone Forti

Simone Forti (March 25, 1935 – July 2026) was an American postmodern artist, dancer, choreographer, and writer. From the 1950s onward, she exhibited, performed, and taught workshops throughout the world.

Forti first apprenticed with Anna Halprin in the 1950s and later worked alongside artists and composers Nam June Paik, Steve Paxton, La Monte Young, Trisha Brown, Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, Dan Graham, Yoshi Wada, Robert Morris, and others.

Her published books include Handbook in Motion (1974, The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), Angel (1978, self-published), Oh Tongue (2003, [reprinted by Nero Editions, Rome, in 2023], and Unbuttoned Sleeves (2006) Beyond Baroque Foundation, ed. Fred Dewey),

Early Life Forti was born in Florence, Italy, on March 25, 1935, to Jewish parents Milka Forti (née Greunstein) and Mario Forti. The family crossed the northern border into Switzerland, then spent six months in Bern while Milka was ill. When Milka recovered, the family sailed to the United States in early 1939. Forti studied under Halprin from 1955 to 1959, during which time she contributed to early works by Halprin and around San Francisco, along with other members of the Dancer's Workshop, including A.A. Leath and John Graham. Through the Dancer's Workshop, Forti also taught children's and adult's dance workshops throughout Marin County. Stuart Comer, the Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MOMA, New York, has said that the exhibitions of Dance Constructions at the Reuben Gallery and Yoko Ono's loft were "a watershed moment when the relationship between bodies and objects, movement and sculpture, was being fundamentally rethought."

Happenings In 1962, Forti and Robert Morris separated. Forti started living and working with artist Robert Whitman, and the two married in 1962. During their six year marriage, Forti was part of Whitman's performance group and she collaborated with him on many of his Happenings. During this time, Simone wrote and performed under the name Simone Whitman. Forti began working with gallerist Fabio Sargentini, whose gallery, L'Attico, was a gathering point for Arte Povera artists at the time. Forti showed a two-evening retrospective of Dance Constructions at L'Attico in 1968. In addition, Forti performed two of her other pieces, Bottom and Sleep Walkers (alternatively titled Zoo Mantras ). Bryan-Wilson wrote further about this performance in the article "Simone Forti Goes to the Zoo", published in October (2015). ́’́́

She moved back to southern California in 1970, where she started living with a group of artists associated with the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Her housemates at the time were artists Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, and musician Peter Van Riper, her future husband. then at CalArts' permanent location in Valencia, CA.

Forti and Van Riper began collaborating on a dance and music performance practice, titled Big Room (alternatively titled Home Base) in 1975. Forti and Van Riper performed Big Room from 1975 to 1980, in France as well as in the United States. who was developing pioneering work in holography in San Francisco. Together, Forti and Cross made several integral holograms (also called a multiplex hologram), a type of hologram that incorporates cinematography to produce a three-dimensional image that appears to move. Each of the three pieces had a duration of 10 minutes. They are durational pieces. Three days a week, performers activate it four times a day. The hologram Striding/Crawling is owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of their permanent collection. The hologram Angel (1977) is owned by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Planet at P.S.1 While back in New York, Forti continued to research the movements of animals in captivity, as she had been doing in Rome, visiting both the Central Park Zoo and Bronx Zoo. Julia Bryan-Wilson wrote further about Forti's identifying with zoos animals in 2015,

"Rather than turning to animals for a model of 'natural' liberation, Forti came to them out of despair, a shared sense of dislocation, loneliness, and isolation. At the same time, she did not neglect their adaptability, attending closely to their moments of connection and collective recreation. She was constantly aware that their movements were shaped not only by their state of captivity but also by their inner reserves of strength. She mentions, for instance, 'the big cats' compulsive pacing at the fence, which seemed to provide a modicum of relief, and writes that it gave her 'a new view of what it was that I was doing when I was dancing.' Movement is, for the animals as well as for her, a method of control and redirected awareness: 'At times I've escaped an oppressive sense of fragmentation by plunging my consciousness into cyclical momentum.'" Performers included David Appel, Sally Banes, Pooh Kaye, and Terrence O'Reilly, Nina Martin, and Eric Hess, among others. Peter Van Riper performed live music.

Forti performed Logomotion both as a solo performance and as a group performance, often with dancer Carmela Hermann, Claire Filmon, or Batyah Schachter, or the members of Simone Forti & Troupe, an ensemble Forti formed with four of her students in 1986.

Forti performed News Animations at numerous venues around the world from 1986 onward, including a 2012 performance at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, Los Angeles, CA, as part of Made in L.A. 2012: Los Angeles Biennial.

Simone Forti & Troupe Forti continued to teach dance workshops and develop new work in her Broadway loft in the years immediately following her separation from Van Riper in 1981. Simone Forti & Troupe performed group pieces in multiple cities across the United States from 1986 to 1991. for each location in which they performed.

The group also often incorporated live drawing into their performances, such as with the piece To Be Continued, performed at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on April 16 and April 19, 1991. where her longtime friend and collaborator Steve Paxton already lived.

Forti wrote about living in East Charleston in "About the News Animations", an essay in the book Jeremiah Day/Simone Forti (2009, Project Press): "When I moved to rural Vermont, my impressions of the news began to mix together with impressions of the Milky Way and of bear tracks along the brook. The richly physical activity of gardening encourages daydream speculations and I was fascinated with the strategies of certain plants, especially the herbs, to take over their neighbors' territories." Forti lived at Mad Brook Farm for ten years, while also traveling to teach and perform. At Mad Brook Farm, Forti developed the group performance piece Green Mountain with her ensemble, Simone Forti & Troupe, which was performed at the Dance Theater Workshop in New York, NY, in 1988. and invited a nucleus of students that attended those workshops to perform a dance improv piece (Open Air Improvisation) with her at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in 2002, calling the ensemble of dancers "5". Beyond Baroque's Director at the time. In 2003, Dewey edited and published Forti's book Oh, Tongue on Beyond Baroque's publishing imprint, Beyond Baroque Foundation. Oh, Tongue would eventually be published in French and have 2nd and 3rd editions published in English. With collaborators writer/improv artist Terrence Luke Johnson, dancer/choreographer Sarah Swenson, and musician/composer Douglas Wadle, Forti performed the dance/theater piece Unbuttoned Sleeves. Forti, Johnson, Swenson, and Wadle called their small ensemble "The Sleeves", and collaboratively published the book Unbuttoned Sleeves on the Beyond Baroque Foundation imprint in 2006. a book that was developed from the exhibition Simone Forti/Jeremiah Day "News Animations"/"No Words For You, Springfield'", which ran from March 27 to May 3, 2008, at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. At the launch party, Forti and Day performed a News Animation together, and Dewey gave a reading. Forti, Day, and Dewey performed and exhibited several more times together as a trio from 2009–2015, and at Errant Bodies in Berlin, Germany, in 2012.

Dewey introduced Forti to Mara McCarthy, director of The Box L.A. gallery and daughter of artist Paul McCarthy, in 2009. Forti and McCarthy planned Forti's first exhibition at The Box L.A. that year, Work In A Range of Mediums, the opening of which was preceded by a performance of To Borrow Salt by The Sleeves ensemble (Forti, Terrence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle). and Forti began to be represented by Galleria Raffaella Cortese in Milan, Italy. An accompanying catalogue, Simone Forti: Thinking with the Body, with essays by Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Fred Dewey, Robert Morris, curator Sabine Breitwieser, Meredith Morse, and Julia Bryan-Wilson, was published in 2014 by Hirmer.

In December 2015, The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Media and Performance Art, acquired Forti's group of nine pieces known as the Dance Constructions.

Death On July 29, 2026, it was announced that Simone Forti had died in Los Angeles at the age of 91.

Awards and achievements 1976 – New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) CAPS Grant 2003 – Lester Horton Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Dance Resource Center of Los Angeles 2005 – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship: Creative Arts - Choreography 2008 – Choreographers in Mentorship and Exchange (CHIME) Grant, Los Angeles 2015 – Anonymous Was A Woman Award 2023 – Golden Lion at Venice Biennale for lifetime achievement in the field of dance

Works 1960: See Saw, Rollers (alternatively titled as Roller Boxes), Demon

1961: Slant Board, Huddle, Hangers, Platforms, Accompaniment for La Monte's 2 sounds and La Monte's 2 sounds, From Instructions, Censor, Herding, Paper Demon

1967: Face Tunes, Cloths, Elevation Tune No. 2, Song, Two At Once, Bottom

1968: Book, Fallers, Sleep Walkers (alternatively titled as Sleepwalkers or Zoo Mantras), Largo Argentina (video), Grizzly Bears (video)

1969: Throat Dance

1970: Scramble

1971: Buzzing, Illuminations (performed with Charlemagne Palestine), Folk Dance, Hippie Gospel Songs

1972: Crawling

1974: Bird's Dance Studies, Numbers

1975: Big Room (performed with Peter Van Riper), Red Green, Zero (performed with Terry O'Reilly and Pooh Kaye)

1976: Planet, Angel (integral hologram), Some Images (multimedia installation), Crawling With Stories, Fan Dance, Green Green, Tokyo Dance Festival (video) This (video)

1977 Paper Piece Two Inches Statues (video: Anne Tardos) Sound and Movement (performed with Peter Van Riper) Performance Number Nine (performed with Peter Van Riper) Movements (integral hologram) For You (performed with Terry O'Reilly and Peter Van Riper) Striding/Crawling (integral hologram) Figure 8 (integral hologram) Planet in Retrograde (integral hologram) Dancer (integral hologram) Harmonics (integral hologram) Huddle (integral hologram) Bug Jump (integral hologram) 1978 Banking (alternatively titled Bicycles) Garden Circling I/II Fountain Phoenix Waking the Forest (alternatively titled Molimo) 1979 Home Base New Dance/New Music (performed with Peter Van Riper) Proceeding Estuary: A Nature Fantasy Umi Aui Owe (performed with Peter Van Riper) Day Night Six Twig Turning in Place Crescent Roll 1981 Jackdaw Songs (performed with Peter Van Riper and Steve Paxton) 1982 Door Studies Asymmetry 222 (performed with Steve Paxton) 1983 Spring (performed with Susan Rethorst and Z'EV) Board Game/Animal Stories (collaboration with Susan Rethorst) 1984 Full Moves 180 Degrees (collaboration with Joan Logue and composer Tod Machover) Face Night Walk 1986 Logomotion News Animations The Foothills (Simone Forti & Troupe performance) Roadcut (Simone Forti & Troupe performance) News Animation: Mad Brook Farm (video) 1988 Green Mountain (Simone Forti & Troupe performance) 1989 Touch Dive In 1990 Animation 1991 To Be Continued Still Life 1996 Still Life With Framing Music 1998 Small Dance for Big Music (performed with Charlemagne Palestine) 2000 Binding (performed with Eric Schofer) Turtles, Interlude, Larousse (performed with Claire Filmon and Carmela Hermann) Tree Improvisation (video) 2002 Open Air Improvisation (performed with members of "5" group – Jeremiah Day, Carmela Hermann, Lisa Bruno, Dana Hirsch, and Simone Forti.) Be Orators (performed with Tom Young) Oh, Langue (performed with Claire Filmon, Karim Zabar, Said Si Mohammed, Garrett List) War & Variations (performed with Terrence Luke Johnson and Dale Eunson) 2003 Structured Improvisation (performed with Eric Schoefer and Leah Stein) 2005 Deep Feelers (performed with Pauline Oliveros and the Brooklyn Adult Recorder Choir (BARC) Unbuttoned Sleeves (performing as The Sleeves, with Simone Forti, Terence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle) 2006 Civics 101 (performing as The Sleeves, with Simone Forti, Terence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle) 2007 Turtles All The Way Down (performing as The Sleeves, with Simone Forti, Terence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle) 2009 To Borrow Salt (performing as The Sleeves, with Simone Forti, Terence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle) 2010 Conversation Piece (performing as The Sleeves, with Simone Forti, Terence Luke Johnson, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle) 2012 That Fish is Broke (performed with Terrence Luke Johnson and Brennan Gerard) 2013 Zuma News (video) Nonsense (performed with Terrence Luke Johnson) 2014 Icebergs (performed with Tashi Wada and Rae Shao-Lan) 2015 Flag in the Water (video) Flowers and Vessel (performed with Oguri and Roxanne Steinberg) 2016 Journey Dream Flower (performed with Oguri) A Free Consultation (video)

Teaching 1959–1960 Anna Halprin's Marin Dance Co-op, Marin County, CA.

Books by Simone Forti L'orso allo specchio. Kunstverein Publishing/Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milano. Andrea Wiarda, Roos Gortzak, Editors. Translated by Andrea di Serego Alighieri. 2020. The Bear In The Mirror. Walther König, Köln. Quinn Latimer, Roos Gortzak, Editors. 2018. Ed. Dewey, Fred. Oh Tongue (2nd ed.). Venice, CA: Beyond Baroque Foundation. 2010. With Day, Jeremiah. Simone Forti/Jeremiah Day. Venice, CA: Project Press. 2009. With Johnson, Terrence Luke, Sarah Swenson, and Douglas Wadle. Unbuttoned Sleeves. Venice, CA: Beyond Baroque Foundation. 2006. "The Light of the Dancing". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer/Fall 2009, Special Focus: Inspiration Expiration, p 17. "itch: writings from a Los Angeles dance journal". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 33 No. 2, Summer/Fall 2008, Special Focus: Activism & Community, p 36 - 39. "The Movement of Attention: An Interview with Daniel Lepkoff". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 29, 2005, p. 8–9. "Years Later". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 18, 2004, p. 18. "Animate Dancing: a practice in dance improvisation". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 26 No. 2, Summer/Fall 2001, p 32 - 39. "CI at World Tai Chi Day". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 26, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2001, Still Moving – Contact Improv. shoptalk & dialogue, p 60 - 62. "Young Frog Falls Over". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 18, 1999, p. 14. "Interview with Nina Martin". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 17, 1998/1999, p. 26. "The Feel of an Ancient Form". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter/Spring 1998, Contact Improvisation's 25th Anniversary Issue, p 3. "Reflections on the Early Days". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 14, 1997. "A Family Tree Story". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 9, 1994, p. 2. "Thoughts on To Be Continued: a sketch of a dance/narrative process". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter/Spring 1994, p 13 - 21. "Great Thanks Empty Words: a tribute to John Cage". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter/Spring 1993, p 94 - IBC. "Far From the Front". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 5, 1992, p 3. "Organic Telling". Movement Research Performance Journal. No. 1, 1990/1991, p 10. "Tea for Two: A Conversation Between Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 15, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1990, Issues Issue 2, p 27 - 31. "Animating the News". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter 1990, Issues Issue 1, p 32 - 35. "A Few Months Ago". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 15, No. 1, Winter 1990, Issues Issue 1, p 3. "Banking: Instructions for a Dance". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 11, No. 2, Spring/Summer 1986, Space/Time Issue 2, p 11 - 13. "Full Moves: thoughts on dance behavior". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall 1984, p 7 - 14. "Home Base". Contact Quarterly. Vol. 5 No. 3/4, Spring/Summer 1980, Focus on Sports, p 6 - 10.

"Dancing at the Fence". Avalanche. No. 10, December 1974, p. 20–23.

"5 Pieces: Dance Report, Dance Report, Dance Construction, Dance Construction, Instructions for a Dance". In An Anthology of Chance Operations... Eds. Young, La Monte, and Jackson Mac Low. New York: Something Else Press, 1963.