Illuminations, 1972

Born in Florence into a Jewish industrial family that emigrated to the United States to escape the Fascist racial laws, Simone Forti was an artist of movement, as she liked to define herself, among the most versatile and influential in the development of contemporary performance practices. Her training in dance began in 1955 in San Francisco, where she took part in the innovative workshops of Anna Halprin and got to know a new approach to dancing and constructing choreography, free from any non-essential element and open to improvisation. In New York four years later, the decisive encounter took place with Robert Dunn, who introduced her to the teachings of John Cage on indeterminacy and freedom of expression. [...]