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What do we mean when we talk about perception in/of dance? The movement of viewers of William Forsythe's dance and performance installation works affords perceptual change in multiple senses—sensory, cognitive, philosophical, aesthetic. This paper explores issues of action, perspective, and convention in the performance of dance spectatorship through a consideration of Forsythe's mobilized audiences. Moving within and between diverse disciplines, this paper simultaneously examines disciplinary specificity, variance, and crossover of the term “perception.”

Choreographer William Forsythe did not set out to engage with Hamlet when creating the 2011 work Sider. Instead, Hamlet’s textual rhythms and dramaturgy were first found to be in uncanny resonance with the ensemble’s choreographic research, then elaborated into a robust, multifaceted, yet obscure dramaturgical underpinning. Drawing on the author’s experience as dramaturg to The Forsythe Company, this article discusses Sider’s devising process, danced dramaturgies, and linkages to Shakespeare’s work, showing how Sider’s choreography, mise en scène, and production mode of live direction extend Hamlet’s dramaturgy to its dancers, audience, and director alike. In doing so, the chapter offers both a close look inside the choreographic craft of Forsythe and his ensemble and a striking example of postdramatic engagement with a classic text.

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