David Gordon (dance)
Encyclopedia
David Gordon is a dancer, choreographer, writer
, actor
and theatrical director prominent in the world of postmodern dance
and performance
. Based in New York City, Gordon's work has been seen in major performance venues across the United States, Europe, South America and Japan, and has appeared on television on PBS's Great Performances
and Alive TV, and the BBC
and Channel 4
in Great Britain.
Twice a Guggenheim Fellow (1981 and 1987), Gordon has been a panelist of the dance program panels of the National Endowment for the Arts
and the New York State Council on the Arts
, and chairman of the former. He is a member of the Actors Studio
, and a founder of the Center for Creative Research.
Gordon is married to Valda Setterfield
, a dancer and actress born in England
, who was for 10 years a featured soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
. She appears regularly in Gordon's work, and has been referred to as his "muse
". Their son, playwright and actor Ain Gordon
, has collaborated with Gordon on a number of projects.
rejection of illusion coupled with an interest in theatricality. He is quoted as saying "I [want] to use mundane means to a magical end." A contrarian by nature, Gordon creates works which are founded on structural clarity, which he then undercuts: "I always find some way to screw up a fabulously straightforward structure," Gordon has said, "I can't seem to avoid that."
Another of Gordon's hallmarks is his fondness for recycling previously used materials, both choreographic and physical. According to critic Arlene Croce
: "Gordon is a collagist. Many of his dances and set pieces ... can be lifted out of context and combined with new material to make a new impression." This is particulary true with his use of gestures, which when seen in one context can appear meaningless or arbitrary, but which will pick up meaning and appear as deliberate when, for instance, accompanied by music or text. According to Gordon:
Gordon's pieces frequently reference films and other aspects of popular culture, and are often autobiographical, or at least apparently so, with the distinction between true facts and fictionalized autobiography deliberately obscured. His pieces often employ humor, sometimes in self-deprecation, and he has been called one of the few "comic spirits" produced by the postmodern dance movement.
and in Coney Island
and graduated from Seward Park High School
. Afterwards, he received a BFA from Brooklyn College
, where he studied English and art, joined the modern dance club, and, at the insistence of a friend, auditioned for and got the lead role of the witch boy in the college's production of Dark of the Moon
.
Just out of school, a chance meeting in Washington Square Park
in 1956 – "a scene right out of Hollywood", in his words – led to Gordon joining the company of James Waring
, where he met Setterfield, who had recently followed her friend David Vaughan from England. Taking the composition class given by Judith and Robert Dunn
led to becoming a founding artist of the Judson Dance Theater
concerts at the Judson Church, which began in 1962 and continued through 1966. Gordon made solos and duets for himself and Setterfield, which he showed at the Living Theatre and the Paula Cooper Gallery
, among other downtown venues. They also participated in the "First New York Theater Rally" organized by Waring at the 81st Street Theater, a seminal cross-fertilization event which mixed a new generation of dancer/choreographers such as Gordon, Carolyn Brown, Trisha Brown
, Lucinda Childs
, Deborah Hay
, Steve Paxton
and Yvonne Rainer
and the visual artists who were involved in creating the Happening
, such as Claes Oldenberg and Jim Dine
.
These early works included:
Gordon and Setterfield were described during this period as "amiable saboteurs ... [with] the stylistic skill of old music-hall comedians ... [and] a wickedly perceptive wit."
In 1966, vociferously negative audience response to his solo piece Walks and Digressions – Gordon wrote that "[t]he audience booed, hissed, clapped, stamped their feet, and walked out across the performance space while I was working"Gordon, David. "It's About Time" The Drama Review v.19 n.1 (March 1975) – caused him to stop making dances for five years.
He continued to perform, as a member of Yvonne Rainer's company, and, from 1970 to 1976, as a founding member of the improvisational dance group, The Grand Union
, which included Rainer, Trisha Brown, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn
, Nancy Lewis and Steve Paxton, among others.
Gordon credits these early experiences with laying the groundwork for his artistic process:
In 1971 Gordon returned to making dances when Rainer put him in charge of her classes while she went to India, from which came the material which became Sleepwalking, first performed at Oberlin College
and then in New York. Gordon formed the Pick Up Performance Company
that year – incorporated in 1978 as a non-profit organization – to support and administer his work in live performance and media. His work during this period included:
and the seminal Chair (1974), a duet for Gordon and Setterfield in which they perform with folding metal chairs, the use of which became a signature of his work.
By this time Gordon and Setterfield had a developed a reputation as "the dance world's most intriguing couple. Ideal mates, ideal opposites, yin and yang, male and female, total communication." Also during this period and into the 1980s, Gordon, a natural contrarian, did not call himself a "choreographer", but billed his pieces as being "constructed" by him. Although he has collaborated with visual artists and designers such as Powers Boothe
, Red Grooms
and Santo Loquasto
, Gordon has often, usually without being credited for it, designed the costumes, decor and props for his pieces. In doing so, he utilizes the contents of thrift stores and makes use of mundane materials such as foam core and gaffers tape.
Gordon's hand-made score for One Part of The Matter – an excerpt from The Matter for solo dancer (Setterfield) – which consisted of cut-outs of poses culled from photographs by Eadweard Muybridge
taped to sheets of paper, is in the drawings collection of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York. The score came about because Setterfield was on tour with the Cunningham company, and Gordon sent her the poses so she could memorize them in her hotel room. When she returned, they worked together on the transitions between the poses.
was born in 1962 – to work full-time as a performer and choreographer. He also appeared in two seminal documentaries about postmodern dance, Beyond the Mainstream: The Postmoderns, part of the PBS Dance in America series, and Michael Blackwood
's Making Dances, which focused on seven choreographers: Brown, Lucinda Childs
, Gordon, Douglas Dunn
, Kenneth King
, Meredith Monk
and Sara Rudner.
In the 1980s, his Pick-Up Company toured throughout the United States, performing both intimate pieces such as:
as well as larger-scale works, including:
and the mammoth United States (1988–1989), which was co-commissioned by 26 presenters in 16 states and has so many sections which exist in different but related versions that they have never all been performed together. Many of Gordon's pieces from this period had their premiere at David White's Dance Theater Workshop
.
Gordon also made work for other companies during this time, including:
He also made Field, Chair and Mountain (1985) and Murder (1986) for American Ballet Theatre
(ABT) under Mikhail Barishnikov. Murder later became part of David Gordon's Made in USA, a television program commissioned by WNET
and Great Performances
in 1987, or which Gordon received a Primetime Emmy Award.
For the Brooklyn Academy of Music
(BAM) in 1983, Gordon choreographed Act III, the dance section, of The Photographer
, a multi-media piece about Eadweard Muybridge
with music by Philip Glass
, in which he incorporated Setterfield's earlier solo One Part of the Matter. Also, he directed Renard, a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky
, for the Spoleto Festival USA
in 1986.
– played by Setterfield – is the central figure around which all the action swirls, received a Bessie and an Obie Award
. It was written, directed and choreographed by Gordon with music again by Philip Glass and visual design by Red Grooms
. The script was published in Grove New American Theater. Gordon then collaborated with his son, playwright Ain Gordon
, on The Family Business, which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop
in New York City in February 1994, received an Obie Award, and was presented at New York Theatre Workshop
and at the Mark Taper Forum
in Los Angeles in 1995. The cast for The Family Business consisted of both Gordons, father and son, and Setterfield.
In 1994, for the American Repertory Theatre
(ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts
and the American Music Theatre Festival (AMTF) in Philadelphia, Gordon directed and choreographed an original musical
, Shlemiel the First, adapted by Robert Brustein
, from the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
, and set to traditional klezmer
music with new lyrics by Arnold Weinstein
. Subsequent productions have been seen at the Geffen Playhouse
in Los Angeles – for which Gordon won Drama-Logue Awards for his direction and choreography in 1997 – and the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco. The show also toured throughout Florida
and in Stamford, Connecticut
, and was re-mounted in 2010 at Montclair State University
's Alexander Kasser Theatre by Peak Performances. This production is scheduled to be presented by Theatre for a New Audience in Manhattan, New York City in late 2011, at New York University
's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
Gordon received a National Theatre Artist Residency Grant, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Theatre Communications Group
, to work with the Guthrie Theater
in Minneapolis, where he directed and choreographed The Firebugs by Max Frisch
for their mainstage in 1995.
Ain and David Gordon collaborated again on the book and direction for Punch & Judy Get Divorced, with music by Edward Barnes
and lyrics by Arnold Weinstein
, which premiered at AMTF in 1996 and was subsequently presented by ART. The piece began in 1991 as a one-act television program made for KTCA for their PBS series Alive TV, and had a second life as a dance piece, set to music by Carl Stalling
, for Barishnikov's White Oak Dance Project
in 1992. In 1999, the Gordons worked together once more, this time on a musical about women directors in the early days of motion pictures, The First Picture Show, with music by Jeanine Tesori
, for ACT in San Francisco and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
in New York. In 2000, he was commissioned by ACT to write an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame
's The Wind in the Willows
, with music by Gina Leishman, which was called Some Kind of Wind in the Willows. This production was workshopped but was never produced. In that same year, he assembled and directed for White Oak a retrospective program of postmodern dance, Past/Forward, which included pieces by Gordon, Simone Forti
, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay
, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown.
In 2004, Gordon made Dancing Henry Five, which utilized William Walton
's music for Laurence Olivier
's film of Shakespeare's Henry V
, as well as dialogue from the film and recorded dramatic recitations of the text by Christopher Plummer
and others. This production received an American Masterpiece Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Dance Program, and has been seen in New York, Minneapolis, Lawrence, Kansas
, the University of Maryland
, Lexington, Kentucky
, and ODC
in San Francisco. In 2011 it was revived and performed at Montclair State University
in New Jersey, Columbia College
in Chicago and the University of Albany, New York.
Gordon has also adapted, directed and choreographed:
In December 2010 to January 2011 he mounted Beginning of the End, a workshop of his adaptation of Luigi Pirandello
's Six Characters in Search of an Author
at Soho Rep, where it is scheduled for a full production in 2012.
in 1985. The critical response was more generous, calling it "remarkable", "irreverent and clever", "a mesmerizing exploration of partnering", and "one of the most beautiful and distinctive [ballets] in ABT's current repertory", and praising Gordon's "deadpan humor and ... obvious nostalgic affection for things romantic", and his "energy and wit". However, Arlene Croce
in The New Yorker
said that the ballet was "the kind of folly that advances to the limit of frivolity on the strength of passion," and in the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff
wrote that "Despite [its] original aspects, "Field, Chair and Mountain" does not add up to anything beyond its isolated parts. Mr. Gordon's ideas seem dressed up in opera-house trappings that hang like ill-fitting clothes".
Twenty years later, Gordon, who had not previously considered himself to be a political artist, created Dancing Henry Five in response to the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. It also received mostly positive critical response. It was called "a bare-bones production that created a powerful epic mood" by John Rockwell
, who compared it favorably to a production of Henry IV
at Lincoln Center
. Other critics praised its "humor and deft movement", its "masterful blend of charm and sting", and called it "stunning and provocative", while describing the movement in the dance-theater piece as "stripped down and democratic". "It takes a witty craftsman of dance theater like Gordon to turn a heroically jingoistic play into a wry but fervent plea for peace", wrote one critic about the most recent revival of the piece, while another wrote that "The means are simple, the dancing far from virtuoso; the thought and meanings are complex."
However, several years prior to the success of Dancing Henry Five, Gordon collaborated with Ain Gordon
and composer Jeanine Tesori
on the stage musical The First Picture Show, about female directors in the early days of the movie business, which starred Estelle Parsons
and Ellen Greene
. The piece was extensively workshopped and performed in San Francisco, at the American Conservatory Theatre, and in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum
, which had commissioned the piece. After the success of Shlemiel the First in L.A. several years before, expectations were high for the new musical, but the critical reception was not overly positive – the critic for the Los Angeles Times
wrote: "This tantalizing if unformed project has too vital a subject, or subjects, for mere nostalgia. Occasionally wonderful and never dull, 'The First Picture Show' lacks a certain urgency in its storytelling." – and the production had no commercial transfer after its subscription run. Some years later, in response to a question about whether his career had ever "hit the wall", Gordon said: "I died in L.A.", but acknowledges that he then "came back to New York and began again, choreographing for my own company." One of the results of starting over was Dancing Henry Five.
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
and theatrical director prominent in the world of postmodern dance
Postmodern dance
Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....
and performance
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
. Based in New York City, Gordon's work has been seen in major performance venues across the United States, Europe, South America and Japan, and has appeared on television on PBS's Great Performances
Great Performances
Great Performances, a television series devoted to the performing arts, has been telecast on Public Broadcasting Service public television since 1972...
and Alive TV, and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
in Great Britain.
Twice a Guggenheim Fellow (1981 and 1987), Gordon has been a panelist of the dance program panels of the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
and the New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell , with backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and began its work in 1961...
, and chairman of the former. He is a member of the Actors Studio
Actors Studio
The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights at 432 West 44th Street in the Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded October 5, 1947, by Elia Kazan, Cheryl Crawford, Robert Lewis and Anna Sokolow who provided...
, and a founder of the Center for Creative Research.
Gordon is married to Valda Setterfield
Valda Setterfield
Valda Setterfield is a dancer and actress noted for his work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and her performances with and in the work of her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon. She has been described as Gordon's "muse"...
, a dancer and actress born in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, who was for 10 years a featured soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
. She appears regularly in Gordon's work, and has been referred to as his "muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
". Their son, playwright and actor Ain Gordon
Ain Gordon
-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
, has collaborated with Gordon on a number of projects.
Style and process
Like most postmodernists in dance, Gordon employs pedestrian movement in his work, but he is notable for his frequent use of spoken dialogue, even in "dance" pieces, as well as his BrechtianBertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
rejection of illusion coupled with an interest in theatricality. He is quoted as saying "I [want] to use mundane means to a magical end." A contrarian by nature, Gordon creates works which are founded on structural clarity, which he then undercuts: "I always find some way to screw up a fabulously straightforward structure," Gordon has said, "I can't seem to avoid that."
Another of Gordon's hallmarks is his fondness for recycling previously used materials, both choreographic and physical. According to critic Arlene Croce
Arlene Croce
Arlene Croce founded Ballet Review magazine in 1965. She was a dance critic for The New Yorker magazine from 1973 to 1998. Prior to her long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticism for Film Culture and other magazines. The keynote of her criticism can be grasped from her ability to...
: "Gordon is a collagist. Many of his dances and set pieces ... can be lifted out of context and combined with new material to make a new impression." This is particulary true with his use of gestures, which when seen in one context can appear meaningless or arbitrary, but which will pick up meaning and appear as deliberate when, for instance, accompanied by music or text. According to Gordon:
Movement is ambiguous until you place it against some background. ... I use a great many repetitions with variations to make the ambiguities of movement apparent. Exploring the alternate possible meanings of gesture is one of my major concerns.
Gordon's pieces frequently reference films and other aspects of popular culture, and are often autobiographical, or at least apparently so, with the distinction between true facts and fictionalized autobiography deliberately obscured. His pieces often employ humor, sometimes in self-deprecation, and he has been called one of the few "comic spirits" produced by the postmodern dance movement.
Early life and career
Gordon, a native of New York City, was born on July 14, 1936 to Samuel and Rose Gordon. He grew up on the Lower East SideLower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
and in Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....
and graduated from Seward Park High School
Seward Park High School
Seward Park High School is a now-closed comprehensive high school which was located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The school began as P.S. 62 Intermediate, a intermediate school. In 1923 the school pursued an experimental path as a combined junior-senior high school...
. Afterwards, he received a BFA from Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, where he studied English and art, joined the modern dance club, and, at the insistence of a friend, auditioned for and got the lead role of the witch boy in the college's production of Dark of the Moon
Dark of the Moon (play)
Dark of the Moon is a dramatic stage play by Howard Richardson and William Berney which had a ten-month run on Broadway in 1945, followed by numerous college and high-school productions....
.
Just out of school, a chance meeting in Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is one of the best-known of New York City's 1,900 public parks. At 9.75 acres , it is a landmark in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity...
in 1956 – "a scene right out of Hollywood", in his words – led to Gordon joining the company of James Waring
James Waring
James Waring was a dancer, choreographer, costume designer and theatrical director based in New York City in the 1940s through the 1970s. He was a prolific choreographer as well as a dedicated teacher who selflessly helped his students and proteges to advance their careers, while maintaining a...
, where he met Setterfield, who had recently followed her friend David Vaughan from England. Taking the composition class given by Judith and Robert Dunn
Robert Ellis Dunn
Robert Ellis Dunn was an American musician and choreographer who led classes in dance composition, contributing to the birth of the postmodern dance period in the early 1960s in New York City .-Early years:...
led to becoming a founding artist of the Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...
concerts at the Judson Church, which began in 1962 and continued through 1966. Gordon made solos and duets for himself and Setterfield, which he showed at the Living Theatre and the Paula Cooper Gallery
Paula Cooper Gallery
The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City founded in 1968.The gallery is primarily known for the Minimalist and Conceptual artists it has represented and whose careers it helped launch. Such artists include: Carl Andre, Jennifer Bartlett, Lynda Benglis, Mark di Suvero, Donald...
, among other downtown venues. They also participated in the "First New York Theater Rally" organized by Waring at the 81st Street Theater, a seminal cross-fertilization event which mixed a new generation of dancer/choreographers such as Gordon, Carolyn Brown, Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
, Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
, Deborah Hay
Deborah Hay
-Life and work:Deborah Hay was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. Her mother was her first dance teacher and directed her training until she was a teenager. Hay moved at age 19 to Downtown, Manhattan in the 1960s, where she continued her training with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska...
, Steve Paxton
Steve Paxton
Steve Paxton is an experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown...
and Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...
and the visual artists who were involved in creating the Happening
Happening
A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings take place anywhere , are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience...
, such as Claes Oldenberg and Jim Dine
Jim Dine
Jim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...
.
These early works included:
- Mama Goes Where Poppa Goes (1960) – his first duet for himself and Setterfield,
- Mannequin Dance (1962),
- Helen's Dance (1962),
- Random Breakfast (1963) – in which Setterfield did a striptease, and
- Silver Pieces (Fragments) (1964).
Gordon and Setterfield were described during this period as "amiable saboteurs ... [with] the stylistic skill of old music-hall comedians ... [and] a wickedly perceptive wit."
In 1966, vociferously negative audience response to his solo piece Walks and Digressions – Gordon wrote that "[t]he audience booed, hissed, clapped, stamped their feet, and walked out across the performance space while I was working"Gordon, David. "It's About Time" The Drama Review v.19 n.1 (March 1975) – caused him to stop making dances for five years.
The review was devastating, and I wasn't clever enough to understand or use the possible notoriety attached to that performance (after all, obviously no one was bored) in a positive career move. I had discovered that publicly performing my own work placed me in an exceedingly vulnerable position emotionally and physically, and I wanted none of it. I believe now that I was basically uncommitted to my work and unable to take responsibility publicly for my decisions. I had worked mainly for the positive response of my peers and of an audience, not gearing my work towards that response but expecting it as the dividends of having worked. When the audience and my peers turned on me, I picked up my marbles and went home. I just decided to stop making work.
He continued to perform, as a member of Yvonne Rainer's company, and, from 1970 to 1976, as a founding member of the improvisational dance group, The Grand Union
Grand Union (dance group)
The Grand Union was an improvisational dance group based in New York City from 1970 to 1976. It grew out of Yvonne Rainer's piece Continuous Project - Altered Daily. Rainer's sole authority as choreographer began to slip in early 1970 when the dancers, at her invitation, began to bring in their...
, which included Rainer, Trisha Brown, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn
Douglas Dunn (Choreographer)
Douglas Dunn is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer. He is considered a highly eclectic and minimalist postmodern choreographer, who uses humor, props, and text in his dances.-Training and education:...
, Nancy Lewis and Steve Paxton, among others.
Gordon credits these early experiences with laying the groundwork for his artistic process:
Jimmy [Waring] was an education for me, as he was for most people who came in contact with him. ... [He] taught me about art and developed my taste, but I didn't begin to understand about making work until later with Yvonne Rainer. From her I found out what it is to be an artist – a person who makes choices and stands behind them. Then, from working with Trisha Brown in the Grand Union, I learned how to edit, how to boil a thing down to its essence. Jimmy's approach was much more whimsical. His way of working led you – or led me at any rate – to accept any idea as valid simply because I'd thought of it. I thought of it and I kept it, and what came next was what I thought of next. I don't believe Jimmy meant to absolve me of all responsibility for my work, but I got the impression that wild intuitive guessing was all I had to do to make art. I never threw anything away. I remember distinctly Jimmy's saying, "If you don't like it now, you can get to like it. If you can't get to like it, who says you have to like it?" The point of it was to demystify art and free the artist from the limitations of his own taste. There was a great sense of liberation that stemmed from John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
's championing of this philosophy, and Jimmy, among others, was establishing alternatives to the kind of teaching that had dominated modern-dance composition up until then.
In 1971 Gordon returned to making dances when Rainer put him in charge of her classes while she went to India, from which came the material which became Sleepwalking, first performed at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
and then in New York. Gordon formed the Pick Up Performance Company
Pick Up Performance Company
The Pick Up Performance Company is a not-for-profit theatrical producing organization founded in 1971 and incorporated in 1978. Its mission is to support the artistic work of choreographer-director-writer David Gordon and playwright Ain Gordon...
that year – incorporated in 1978 as a non-profit organization – to support and administer his work in live performance and media. His work during this period included:
- The Matter (1972) – which utilized volunteer non-dancers who had signed up at a Grand Union concert to participate in Gordon's next project, *Times Four (1975),
- Personal Inventory (1976) – in which Gordon and Setterfield each had to improvise 500 different movements, counting them as they went,
- Wordsworth and the Motor (1977),
- Not Necessarily Recognizable Objectives (1977) – for which Gordon won the first Soho Weekly News Soho Arts Award in Avant-Garde Dance,
- What Happened (1978),
- An Audience With the Pope (or This Is Where I Came In) (1979)
and the seminal Chair (1974), a duet for Gordon and Setterfield in which they perform with folding metal chairs, the use of which became a signature of his work.
By this time Gordon and Setterfield had a developed a reputation as "the dance world's most intriguing couple. Ideal mates, ideal opposites, yin and yang, male and female, total communication." Also during this period and into the 1980s, Gordon, a natural contrarian, did not call himself a "choreographer", but billed his pieces as being "constructed" by him. Although he has collaborated with visual artists and designers such as Powers Boothe
Powers Boothe
Powers Allen Boothe is an American television and film actor. Some of his most notable roles include his Emmy-winning 1980 portrayal of Jim Jones and his turn as Cy Tolliver on Deadwood, as well as Vice-President Noah Daniels on 24....
, Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
and Santo Loquasto
Santo Loquasto
Santo Richard Loquasto is a Sicilian-Italian-American production designer, scenic designer and costume designer for stage, film, and dance. He is a descendant of Libertino lo Guasto of Serradifalco, Caltanissetta, Sicily. Indy race car driver Al Loquasto was his first cousin...
, Gordon has often, usually without being credited for it, designed the costumes, decor and props for his pieces. In doing so, he utilizes the contents of thrift stores and makes use of mundane materials such as foam core and gaffers tape.
Gordon's hand-made score for One Part of The Matter – an excerpt from The Matter for solo dancer (Setterfield) – which consisted of cut-outs of poses culled from photographs by Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...
taped to sheets of paper, is in the drawings collection of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York. The score came about because Setterfield was on tour with the Cunningham company, and Gordon sent her the poses so she could memorize them in her hotel room. When she returned, they worked together on the transitions between the poses.
1980s
In 1980, Gordon gave up his job creating window displays, which for 18 years had supported both his work and his family – his son AinAin Gordon
-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
was born in 1962 – to work full-time as a performer and choreographer. He also appeared in two seminal documentaries about postmodern dance, Beyond the Mainstream: The Postmoderns, part of the PBS Dance in America series, and Michael Blackwood
Michael Blackwood
Michael Blackwood is a male track and field athlete from Jamaica, who specializes in 400 Metres, his personal best being 44.60 set in Madrid in 2002. He is the brother of Catherine Scott.-Achievements:...
's Making Dances, which focused on seven choreographers: Brown, Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs
Lucinda Childs is an American postmodern dancer/choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into an intricate choreographic masterpiece...
, Gordon, Douglas Dunn
Douglas Dunn (Choreographer)
Douglas Dunn is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer. He is considered a highly eclectic and minimalist postmodern choreographer, who uses humor, props, and text in his dances.-Training and education:...
, Kenneth King
Kenneth King (dancer)
Kenneth King is an American post-modern dancer and choreographer who is best known for his experimentations with dance and multimedia...
, Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...
and Sara Rudner.
In the 1980s, his Pick-Up Company toured throughout the United States, performing both intimate pieces such as:
- Close Up (1979) – a duet for Gordon and Setterfield – and
- Dorothy and Eileen (1980), in which two female dancers improvise dialogue about their mothers – which has been called "[o]ne of his most successfully conceived and rendered pieces";
as well as larger-scale works, including:
- T.V. Reel (1982),
- Trying Times (1982) – which ends with Gordon being put on trial by his dancers,
- Framework (1983),
- My Folks (1984) – set to klezmer music,
- Four Men Nine Lives (1985),
- Transparent Means for Travelling Light (1986) – performed to a score by John CageJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
,
and the mammoth United States (1988–1989), which was co-commissioned by 26 presenters in 16 states and has so many sections which exist in different but related versions that they have never all been performed together. Many of Gordon's pieces from this period had their premiere at David White's Dance Theater Workshop
Dance Theater Workshop
Dance Theater Workshop, colloquially known as DTW, is a New York City performance space and service organization for dance companies. Located as 219 West 19th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, DTW was founded in 1965 by Jeff Duncan, Art Bauman and...
.
Gordon also made work for other companies during this time, including:
- Grote Ogen ("Big Eyes") for Wekcentrum Dans in the Netherlands (1981),
- Pas et Par for Theatre du Silence in Lyons (1981),
- Counter Revolution (1981), Field Study (1984) and Bach and Offenbach (1986) for London's Extemporary Dance Theatre,
- Piano Movers to music by Thelonious MonkThelonious MonkThelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
for Dance Theatre of HarlemDance Theatre of HarlemDance Theatre of Harlem is a ballet company and school of the allied arts founded in Harlem, New York City, USA in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook...
(1984), - Beethoven and Booth (1985) for Group Recherche Choreographique de l'Opera de Paris, and
- Mates for Rambert Dance CompanyRambert Dance CompanyRambert Dance Company, is a leading British dance company. Formed at the start of the 20th century as a classical ballet company, it would exert a great deal of influence on the development of dance in the United Kingdom, and today, as a contemporary dance company, it continues to be one of the...
(1988).
He also made Field, Chair and Mountain (1985) and Murder (1986) for American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre
American Ballet Theatre , based in New York City, was one of the foremost ballet companies of the 20th century. It continues as a leading dance company in the world today...
(ABT) under Mikhail Barishnikov. Murder later became part of David Gordon's Made in USA, a television program commissioned by WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...
and Great Performances
Great Performances
Great Performances, a television series devoted to the performing arts, has been telecast on Public Broadcasting Service public television since 1972...
in 1987, or which Gordon received a Primetime Emmy Award.
For the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
(BAM) in 1983, Gordon choreographed Act III, the dance section, of The Photographer
The Photographer
The Photographer is a chamber opera by composer Philip Glass that is based on the homicide trial of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. The opera is based on words drawn from the trial as well as Muybridge's letters to his wife...
, a multi-media piece about Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard J. Muybridge was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible...
with music by Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
, in which he incorporated Setterfield's earlier solo One Part of the Matter. Also, he directed Renard, a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, for the Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA
Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina, is one of the world's major performing arts festivals. It was founded in 1977 by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti, who sought to establish a counterpart to the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy...
in 1986.
1990s
The Mysteries and What's So Funny? (1991), in which Marcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
– played by Setterfield – is the central figure around which all the action swirls, received a Bessie and an Obie Award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
. It was written, directed and choreographed by Gordon with music again by Philip Glass and visual design by Red Grooms
Red Grooms
Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life...
. The script was published in Grove New American Theater. Gordon then collaborated with his son, playwright Ain Gordon
Ain Gordon
-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
, on The Family Business, which premiered at Dance Theater Workshop
Dance Theater Workshop
Dance Theater Workshop, colloquially known as DTW, is a New York City performance space and service organization for dance companies. Located as 219 West 19th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, DTW was founded in 1965 by Jeff Duncan, Art Bauman and...
in New York City in February 1994, received an Obie Award, and was presented at New York Theatre Workshop
New York Theatre Workshop
__notoc__New York Theatre Workshop is an Off-Broadway theatre noted for its productions of new works. Located at 79 East 4th Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it houses a 198-seat theatre for its mainstage productions, and a...
and at the Mark Taper Forum
Mark Taper Forum
The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...
in Los Angeles in 1995. The cast for The Family Business consisted of both Gordons, father and son, and Setterfield.
In 1994, for the American Repertory Theatre
American Repertory Theatre
The American Repertory Theater is a professional not-for-profit theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, the A.R.T. is known for its commitment to new American plays and music–theater explorations; to neglected works of the past; and to established classical texts...
(ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
and the American Music Theatre Festival (AMTF) in Philadelphia, Gordon directed and choreographed an original musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, Shlemiel the First, adapted by Robert Brustein
Robert Brustein
Robert Sanford Brustein is an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright and educator. He founded both Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remains a Creative Consultant, and has been the theatre critic for...
, from the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
, and set to traditional klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
music with new lyrics by Arnold Weinstein
Arnold Weinstein
Arnold Weinstein was an American poet, playwright and librettist, who referred to himself as a "theatre poet"....
. Subsequent productions have been seen at the Geffen Playhouse
Geffen Playhouse
The Geffen Playhouse is a not for profit performing arts theater in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Originally named the Westwood Playhouse, UCLA purchased the property in 1993. UCLA's then chancellor, Charles E. Young, appointed Gil Cates Producing Director...
in Los Angeles – for which Gordon won Drama-Logue Awards for his direction and choreography in 1997 – and the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco. The show also toured throughout Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and in Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford, Connecticut
Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643, making it the fourth largest city in the state and the eighth largest city in New England...
, and was re-mounted in 2010 at Montclair State University
Montclair State University
Montclair State University is a public research university located in the Upper Montclair section of Montclair, the Great Notch area of Little Falls, and Clifton, New Jersey. As of October 2009, there were 18,171 total enrolled students: 14,139 undergraduate students and 4,032 graduate students...
's Alexander Kasser Theatre by Peak Performances. This production is scheduled to be presented by Theatre for a New Audience in Manhattan, New York City in late 2011, at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
Gordon received a National Theatre Artist Residency Grant, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group
Theatre Communications Group is an organization dedicated to the promotion of non-profit professional theatre in the United States. TCG has over 450 member theatres located in 47 states; 17,000 individual members; and a growing number of University, Funder, Business and Trustee Affiliates...
, to work with the Guthrie Theater
Guthrie Theater
The Guthrie Theater is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the result of the desire of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler to create a resident acting company that would produce and perform the classics in...
in Minneapolis, where he directed and choreographed The Firebugs by Max Frisch
Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch was a Swiss playwright and novelist, regarded as highly representative of German-language literature after World War II. In his creative works Frisch paid particular attention to issues relating to problems of human identity, individuality, responsibility, morality and political...
for their mainstage in 1995.
Ain and David Gordon collaborated again on the book and direction for Punch & Judy Get Divorced, with music by Edward Barnes
Edward Barnes (composer)
Edward Barnes is an American composer and producer.Edward Barnes studied music composition at the Juilliard School with composers Vincent Persichetti and David Diamond, and at Dartington Hall in Great Britain with composer-conductor Sir Peter Maxwell Davies...
and lyrics by Arnold Weinstein
Arnold Weinstein
Arnold Weinstein was an American poet, playwright and librettist, who referred to himself as a "theatre poet"....
, which premiered at AMTF in 1996 and was subsequently presented by ART. The piece began in 1991 as a one-act television program made for KTCA for their PBS series Alive TV, and had a second life as a dance piece, set to music by Carl Stalling
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...
, for Barishnikov's White Oak Dance Project
White Oak Dance Project
The White Oak Dance Project was a dance company founded in 1990 by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris to be the touring arm of the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation....
in 1992. In 1999, the Gordons worked together once more, this time on a musical about women directors in the early days of motion pictures, The First Picture Show, with music by Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
, for ACT in San Francisco and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
2000s
Other productions Gordon has created as writer, director and choreographer include Autobiography of a Liar (1999), FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy (2001) – for which he received his third Bessie Award – and Private Lives of Dancers (2002), all originally presented at DanspaceDanspace Project
Danspace Project was founded in 1974 to provide a performance venue for contemporary dance. Its performances are held in St. Mark's Church in the East Village area of the Manhattan borough of New York City.-History and mission:...
in New York. In 2000, he was commissioned by ACT to write an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame was a Scottish writer, most famous for The Wind in the Willows , one of the classics of children's literature. He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon; both books were later adapted into Disney films....
's The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...
, with music by Gina Leishman, which was called Some Kind of Wind in the Willows. This production was workshopped but was never produced. In that same year, he assembled and directed for White Oak a retrospective program of postmodern dance, Past/Forward, which included pieces by Gordon, Simone Forti
Simone Forti
Simone Forti , a postmodern American choreographer and musician, was born in Italy but moved to the United States at a young age. Throughout her career she became known for a style of dancing and choreography that was largely based on basic everyday movements, such as games and children's...
, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay
Deborah Hay
-Life and work:Deborah Hay was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. Her mother was her first dance teacher and directed her training until she was a teenager. Hay moved at age 19 to Downtown, Manhattan in the 1960s, where she continued her training with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska...
, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown.
In 2004, Gordon made Dancing Henry Five, which utilized William Walton
William Walton
Sir William Turner Walton OM was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera...
's music for Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
's film of Shakespeare's Henry V
Henry V (1944 film)
Henry V is a 1944 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The on-screen title is The Cronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France . It stars Laurence Olivier, who also directed. The play was adapted for the screen by Olivier, Dallas...
, as well as dialogue from the film and recorded dramatic recitations of the text by Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orne Plummer, CC is a Canadian theatre, film and television actor. He made his film debut in 1957's Stage Struck, and notable early film performances include Night of the Generals, The Return of the Pink Panther and The Man Who Would Be King.In a career that spans over five...
and others. This production received an American Masterpiece Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
Dance Program, and has been seen in New York, Minneapolis, Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence, Kansas
Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...
, the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
, and ODC
ODC/Dance
ODC/Dance is a contemporary dance company founded in 1971 by artistic director Brenda Way. ODC relocated to San Francisco in 1976 and was the first dance company in America to build its own home facility in 1979 from which it still operates...
in San Francisco. In 2011 it was revived and performed at Montclair State University
Montclair State University
Montclair State University is a public research university located in the Upper Montclair section of Montclair, the Great Notch area of Little Falls, and Clifton, New Jersey. As of October 2009, there were 18,171 total enrolled students: 14,139 undergraduate students and 4,032 graduate students...
in New Jersey, Columbia College
Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is one of the largest art colleges in the United States with nearly 12,000 students pursuing degrees within 120 undergraduate and graduate programs...
in Chicago and the University of Albany, New York.
Gordon has also adapted, directed and choreographed:
- Eugene IonescoEugène IonescoEugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
's The Chairs (2004, presented in LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Seattle and at the Brooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of MusicBrooklyn Academy of Music is a major performing arts venue in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, United States, known as a center for progressive and avant garde performance....
in New York City) – in which he and Setterfield played the Old Man and the Old Woman to a solo celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
score composed by Michael GordonMichael Gordon (composer)Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and ensemble. His music is associated with the genres of totalism and post-minimalism.-Early life:...
(no relative); - He Who Gets SlappedHe Who Gets SlappedHe Who Gets Slapped is a 1924 film starring Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, and John Gilbert. It was directed by Victor Sjöström. The film is based on the Russian play Тот, кто получает пощёчины by playwright Leonid Andreyev, which was published in 1914 and in English, as He Who Gets Slapped, in 1922...
(2004, for Theatre for a New Audience in New York); - AristophanesAristophanesAristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
' The BirdsThe Birds (play)The Birds is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BCE at the City Dionysia where it won second prize. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfectly realized fantasy remarkable for its mimicry of birds and for the gaiety of its songs...
(2006, as Aristophanes in Birdonia) and - The Roundheads and the PointheadsRound Heads and Pointed HeadsRound Heads and Pointed Heads is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Hanns Eisler...
by Bertholt Brecht with music by Hanns EislerHanns EislerHanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
(2002–2009, as Uncivil Wars: Moving with Brecht and Eisler, commissioned by the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and The KitchenThe KitchenThe Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
in New York City).
In December 2010 to January 2011 he mounted Beginning of the End, a workshop of his adaptation of Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
's Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author
Six Characters in Search of an Author is a play by the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello.The play is a satirical tragicomedy. It was first performed in 1921 at the Teatro Valle in Rome, to a very mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" .Subsequently the play enjoyed a much...
at Soho Rep, where it is scheduled for a full production in 2012.
Reception
Gordon's work has been generally well-received by the critics and the public, although his piece Field, Chair and Mountain for American Ballet Theater, his first ballet, was reportedly booed at its premiere at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
in 1985. The critical response was more generous, calling it "remarkable", "irreverent and clever", "a mesmerizing exploration of partnering", and "one of the most beautiful and distinctive [ballets] in ABT's current repertory", and praising Gordon's "deadpan humor and ... obvious nostalgic affection for things romantic", and his "energy and wit". However, Arlene Croce
Arlene Croce
Arlene Croce founded Ballet Review magazine in 1965. She was a dance critic for The New Yorker magazine from 1973 to 1998. Prior to her long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticism for Film Culture and other magazines. The keynote of her criticism can be grasped from her ability to...
in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
said that the ballet was "the kind of folly that advances to the limit of frivolity on the strength of passion," and in the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff
Anna Kisselgoff
Anna Kisselgoff is a dance critic and cultural news reporter for the New York Times. She began at the Times as a dance critic and cultural news reporter in 1968, and became its Chief Dance Critic in 1977, a role she held until 2005...
wrote that "Despite [its] original aspects, "Field, Chair and Mountain" does not add up to anything beyond its isolated parts. Mr. Gordon's ideas seem dressed up in opera-house trappings that hang like ill-fitting clothes".
Twenty years later, Gordon, who had not previously considered himself to be a political artist, created Dancing Henry Five in response to the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. It also received mostly positive critical response. It was called "a bare-bones production that created a powerful epic mood" by John Rockwell
John Rockwell
John Rockwell is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture....
, who compared it favorably to a production of Henry IV
Henry IV
Henry IV may refer to:* Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor , King of The Romans and Holy Roman Emperor* Henry IV, Duke of Brabant * Henry IV Probus , Duke of Wrocław* Heinrich IV Dusemer von Arfberg Henry IV may refer to:* Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (1050–1106), King of The Romans and Holy Roman...
at Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of New York City's Upper West Side. Reynold Levy has been its president since 2002.-History and facilities:...
. Other critics praised its "humor and deft movement", its "masterful blend of charm and sting", and called it "stunning and provocative", while describing the movement in the dance-theater piece as "stripped down and democratic". "It takes a witty craftsman of dance theater like Gordon to turn a heroically jingoistic play into a wry but fervent plea for peace", wrote one critic about the most recent revival of the piece, while another wrote that "The means are simple, the dancing far from virtuoso; the thought and meanings are complex."
However, several years prior to the success of Dancing Henry Five, Gordon collaborated with Ain Gordon
Ain Gordon
-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
and composer Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori
Jeanine Tesori is an American musical arranger and composer who won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center and the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change.Tesori made her Broadway...
on the stage musical The First Picture Show, about female directors in the early days of the movie business, which starred Estelle Parsons
Estelle Parsons
Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...
and Ellen Greene
Ellen Greene
Ellen Greene is an American singer and actress. Greene has had a long and varied career as a singer, particularly in cabaret, as an actor and singer in numerous stage productions, particularly musical theatre, as well as having performed in many films – notably Little Shop of Horrors...
. The piece was extensively workshopped and performed in San Francisco, at the American Conservatory Theatre, and in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum
Mark Taper Forum
The Mark Taper Forum is a 739 seat thrust stage at the Los Angeles Music Center built by Welton Becket and Associates on the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles...
, which had commissioned the piece. After the success of Shlemiel the First in L.A. several years before, expectations were high for the new musical, but the critical reception was not overly positive – the critic for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
wrote: "This tantalizing if unformed project has too vital a subject, or subjects, for mere nostalgia. Occasionally wonderful and never dull, 'The First Picture Show' lacks a certain urgency in its storytelling." – and the production had no commercial transfer after its subscription run. Some years later, in response to a question about whether his career had ever "hit the wall", Gordon said: "I died in L.A.", but acknowledges that he then "came back to New York and began again, choreographing for my own company." One of the results of starting over was Dancing Henry Five.
Analysis and interpretation
Throughout his career, critics have encapsulated Gordon and his work:Gordon wants to sensitize the spectator to a shifting dialectic between the individual gesture and the larger choreographic structure in which it is embedded. Rather then highlighting the individual gesture as such, Gordon playfully investigates the ways in which a discreet movement in a dance phrase will change in terms of how we perceive it as a result of the position it occupies in systematically varied choreographic complexes. (Noel Carroll
Noël CarrollNoël Carroll is an American philosopher considered to be one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy of art. Although Professor Carroll is best known for his work in the philosophy of film, he works in general on philosophy of art, theory of media, and also philosophy of history...
, 1978)
[Gordon] has been labelled a formalist, a structuralist, a master wordsmith, an avant-garde comedian, a satirist, a reflexive parodist. His works are profound investigations of correspondances and collisions between language and movement, examinations of the creative and performing processes, explorations of structures. They are also enormously likable and often delightfully humorous. (Amanda Smith
Amanda SmithAmanda Berry Smith was a former slave who became an inspiration to thousands of women both black and white. She was born in Long Green, Maryland, a small town in Baltimore County. Her father's name was Samuel Berry while her mother's name was Mariam...
, 1981)
In David Gordon's dances, simple movement phrases are reiterated until what you notice is not the movement itself but the distinctiveness of the bodies of the performers. Gordon's genius lies both in his choice of dancers, most noticeably his wife and longtime collaborator Valda Setterfield, and in his gestural vocabulary. Also, his use of language underscores the message of his dances, which is that the body's actions and signals, like words, can change their meaning depending on their context. The phrasing of Gordon's movements is uninflected, fluid, tending to slide comfortably through the memory, so that what you want to pay attention to is the very manner in which these particular interesting figures do whatever it is they are doing. (Sally Banes
Sally BanesSally Banes is a notable dance historian, writer, and critic.Sally Banes is recognized as an expert on the current dance scene and the new trends that are continually appearing in the art...
, 1981)
[L]ongtime observers of Gordon's work would be hard pressed to find a better definition of it than one vast game that he plays with Valda Setterfield. His sense of irony has been bouncing off her level, unassuming façade for years. Since she is always perfectly straight, Gordon's own gift for projecting comic ambiguity in language and movement can shine all the brighter, with an innocence beyond stain. It may be that without Setterfield as chief sounding board and accomplice he would not have developed his double edge at all – at least, not into the guileless satirical instrument it is now. (Arlene Croce
Arlene CroceArlene Croce founded Ballet Review magazine in 1965. She was a dance critic for The New Yorker magazine from 1973 to 1998. Prior to her long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticism for Film Culture and other magazines. The keynote of her criticism can be grasped from her ability to...
, 1982)
What [Gordon] is, I think, is a plasario punographer: playwright/impresario/punster/choreographer. He's also the dance world's leading humanist. His work has a warmth, a glow, a wry humor and an all-encompassing love for life. The quirks, foibles and impossible complexities of our urban environment are seen and shown as both invigorating and consoling, frustrating and stimulating. (Allen Robertson, 1982)
Formed by the polemical 1960s, Gordon seems to be, by nature, an ironist, with an appreciation of paradox, a fascination with the psychology of partnering, an ambivalence about glamour and fame. On occasion he has revealed a critical temperament and, in postmodern (or Balanchinian) fashion, an interest in layered allusions. He also husbands themes and effects. (Mindy Aloff
Mindy AloffMindy Aloff is an American editor, journalist, essayist, and dance critic.-Life:She was educated at Philadelphia High School for Girls, and graduated from Vassar College, and University at Buffalo, The State University of New York with an M.A.She married the poet Martin Steven Cohen, in 1968; they...
, 1985)
Gordon is a true contrarian; he always seems to work against the grain. ... The mythology of [the Judson Dance Theatre] often equates the entire era with Yvonne Rainer's manifesto of renunciation. ... No to transformations and magic? Not for David Gordon. (Although it's essential to point out that his attitude toward transformation and magic has more in common with the work of hip, anti-illusionistic conjurors like Penn and Teller than with the overproduced, mysterioso/glitz of David Copperfield.) Gordon is the sort of magician who shows you where the rabbit is hiding in the hat. ... [H]e isn't the first choreographer to make a major contribution to the theatre. ... But Gordon is the first "dance person" who's as much a playwright as a choreographer. (Roger Copeland
Roger CopelandRoger Copeland is Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College where he teaches History of Western Theatre among other classes. His essays about theater, film, and dance have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Village Voice, Film Comment, Partisan Review, American Theatre,...
, 1996)
David Gordon is no ordinary choreographer, He understands how to manipulate text and dance so that the result evokes an invigorating place, where thoughtful theater takes on the appearance of being casual. It never is just that. ... [He] plays with many pieces of seemingly disparate phrases before they are transformed into an eloquent whole. In many ways, he is a gleaner of his own work, which he files away with the possibility of revisiting it in the future. ... But as much as he revives material after recontextualizing it, most fundamental to the vitality of [his] repertory is not what the movement looks like or even what the words say, but the beguiling way in which they fit together. He is a director who knows dance. And even though there is a bit of everything in his work – humor, musicality, lush movement – he is unpredictable. (Gia Kourlas, 2002)
Awards and honors
- 1978 – Soho Weekly News SoHo Arts Award in Avant-Garde Dance (New Dance) for Not Necessarily Recognizable Objectives
- 1981 – Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
- 1984 – Bessie Award, for Framework, The Photographer and sustained achievement
- 1987 – Guggenheim Fellowship
- 1988 – Primetime Emmy AwardEmmy AwardAn Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Classical Music/Dance Programming, Writing for David Gordon's Made in USA - 1991 – Bessie Award, for The Mysteries and What's So Funny
- 1992 – Obie AwardObie AwardThe Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
, for The Mysteries and What's So Funny - 1994 – Obie Award, with Ain GordonAin Gordon-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
and Valda SetterfieldValda SetterfieldValda Setterfield is a dancer and actress noted for his work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and her performances with and in the work of her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon. She has been described as Gordon's "muse"...
, for The Family Business - 1995 – National Theatre Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the Theatre Communications GroupTheatre Communications GroupTheatre Communications Group is an organization dedicated to the promotion of non-profit professional theatre in the United States. TCG has over 450 member theatres located in 47 states; 17,000 individual members; and a growing number of University, Funder, Business and Trustee Affiliates...
- 1996 – National Dance Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the New York Foundation for the ArtsNew York Foundation for the ArtsThe New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
- 1997 – Drama-Logue Awards, Outstanding Achievement in Theatre, Direction and Choreography, for Shlemiel the First
- 2001 – Bessie Award, for FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy
- 2010 – American Masterpieces: Dance, National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the ArtsThe National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, for Dancing Henry Five
See also
- avant-gardeAvant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
- Dance Theater WorkshopDance Theater WorkshopDance Theater Workshop, colloquially known as DTW, is a New York City performance space and service organization for dance companies. Located as 219 West 19th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, DTW was founded in 1965 by Jeff Duncan, Art Bauman and...
- Danspace
- Mikhail Barishnikov
- Trisha BrownTrisha BrownTrisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
- Merce CunninghamMerce CunninghamMercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
- Ain GordonAin Gordon-Life:He began writing and directing for the stage in 1985. He emerged on to the downtown dance/performance scene with four consecutive seasons at Dance Theater Workshop plus performances at Movement Research, The Poetry Project, and Performance Space 122...
- The Grand UnionGrand Union (dance group)The Grand Union was an improvisational dance group based in New York City from 1970 to 1976. It grew out of Yvonne Rainer's piece Continuous Project - Altered Daily. Rainer's sole authority as choreographer began to slip in early 1970 when the dancers, at her invitation, began to bring in their...
- Judson Dance Theatre
- musical theatreMusical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
- performance artPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Pick Up Performance CompanyPick Up Performance CompanyThe Pick Up Performance Company is a not-for-profit theatrical producing organization founded in 1971 and incorporated in 1978. Its mission is to support the artistic work of choreographer-director-writer David Gordon and playwright Ain Gordon...
- postmodernismPostmodernismPostmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
- postmodern dancePostmodern dancePostmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....
- Yvonne RainerYvonne RainerYvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...
- Twyla TharpTwyla TharpTwyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...
- Valda SetterfieldValda SetterfieldValda Setterfield is a dancer and actress noted for his work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and her performances with and in the work of her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon. She has been described as Gordon's "muse"...