The later 1950s and early 1960s saw the development and proliferation of radically new forms of dance driven by a desire to understand the essentiality of movement divorced from traditional, balletic and modern syntaxes. At the forefront of this new wave of performance was Simone Forti, an artist with a hand in both improvisational techniques and choreographed task-maneuvers. This interview details her exploration of each – with a particular focus on her earliest investigations into movement, owing to time spent under the study of Anna Halprin. Crucial to Forti’s career was Halprin’s concept of “experiential anatomy” – wherein a scientific understanding of bio-organic motor-systems, particularly those of the human’s, was complemented and furthered by the close observation of those systems at work. Movement, and by extension, dance, for Forti then became a way of knowing the action and structure of things.