David Gordon (choreographer)

For other people of the same name, see David Gordon (disambiguation).

David Gordon
Born	July 14, 1936 (1936-07-14) (age 75)[1] Lower East Side Manhattan, New York City
Spouse	Valda Setterfield
Nationality	American
Field	postmodern dance theatre musical theatre
Movement	Judson Dance Theater
Works	(see article)
Influenced by	James Waring
Influenced	Ain Gordon
Awards	(see below)
Website	Pick Up Performance Co(s)

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.^[2] 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.^[2] She appears regularly in Gordon's work, and has been referred to as his "muse".^[3] Their son, playwright and actor Ain Gordon, has collaborated with Gordon on a number of projects.

Style and process

Like most postmodernists in dance, Gordon employs pedestrian movement in his work,^[4][5] but he is notable for his frequent use of spoken dialogue, even in "dance" pieces, as well as his Brechtian rejection of illusion coupled with an interest in theatricality.^[6] He is quoted as saying "I [want] to use mundane means to a magical end."^[2] 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."^[7]

Another of Gordon's hallmarks is his fondness for recycling previously used materials, both choreographic and physical.^[4] 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."^[8] 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.^[7] 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.^[7]

Gordon's pieces frequently reference films and other aspects of popular culture,^[1] and are often autobiographical, or at least apparently so, with the distinction between true facts and fictionalized autobiography deliberately obscured.^[9] His pieces often employ humor, sometimes in self-deprecation,^[10] and he has been called one of the few "comic spirits" produced by the postmodern dance movement.^[2]

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 Side and in Coney Island and graduated from Seward Park High School. Afterwards, he received a BFA from Brooklyn College,^[11] where he studied English and art,^[2] joined the modern dance club,^[4] 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.^[12]

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^[13] from England.^[4] 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.^[14] 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.^[15]

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).^[16]

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."^[17]

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"^[18] – 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.^[18]

He continued to perform, as a member of Yvonne Rainer's company,^[4] and, from 1970 to 1976,^[2][19] 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.^[20]

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 Cage'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.^[2]

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,^[4] 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^[21] 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,^[22] *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,^[2] the use of which became a signature of his work.^[23]

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."^[13] Also during this period and into the 1980s, Gordon, a natural contrarian,^[23] did not call himself a "choreographer", but billed his pieces as being "constructed" by him.^[2] 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.^[24] 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.^[19]

1980s

In 1980, Gordon gave up his job creating window displays,^[25] which for 18 years had supported both his work and his family – his son Ain was born in 1962 – to work full-time as a performer and choreographer.^[2][26] 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.^[27][28]

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^[2] – which has been called "[o]ne of his most successfully conceived and rendered pieces"^[9];

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,^[8]
• 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 Cage,

and the mammoth United States (1988–1989), which was co-commissioned by 26 presenters in 16 states^[29] 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:

• 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 Monk for Dance Theatre of Harlem (1984),^[30]
• Beethoven and Booth (1985) for Group Recherche Choreographique de l'Opera de Paris, and
• Mates for Rambert Dance Company (1988).

He also made Field, Chair and Mountain (1985)^[30] 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.

1990s

The Mysteries and What's So Funny? (1991), in which Marcel Duchamp – 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.^[31] 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.^[32] 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.^[33]

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.

2000s

Other productions Gordon has created as writer, director and choreographer include Autobiography of a Liar (1999), FAMILY$[e-mail] (2001) – for which he received his third Bessie Award^[34] – and Private Lives of Dancers (2002), all originally presented at Danspace 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.^[35] 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.^[36]

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,^[37] 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:

• Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs (2004, presented in London, Seattle and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City) – in which he and Setterfield played the Old Man and the Old Woman to a solo cello score composed by Michael Gordon (no relative);
• He Who Gets Slapped (2004, for Theatre for a New Audience in New York);
• Aristophanes' The Birds (2006, as Aristophanes in Birdonia) and
• The Roundheads and the Pointheads by Bertholt Brecht with music by Hanns Eisler (2002–2009, as Uncivil Wars: Moving with Brecht and Eisler, commissioned by the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and The Kitchen in New York City).

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,^[38] 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. in 1985.^[39][40] The critical response was more generous, calling it "remarkable",^[41] "irreverent and clever",^[42] "a mesmerizing exploration of partnering",^[43] and "one of the most beautiful and distinctive [ballets] in ABT's current repertory",^[44] and praising Gordon's "deadpan humor and ... obvious nostalgic affection for things romantic",^[45] and his "energy and wit".^[46] 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,"^[47] 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".^[48]

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.^[49] 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.^[50] Other critics praised its "humor and deft movement",^[51] its "masterful blend of charm and sting",^[49] and called it "stunning and provocative",^[52] while describing the movement in the dance-theater piece as "stripped down and democratic".^[53] "It takes a witty craftsman of dance theater like Gordon to turn a heroically jingoistic play into a wry but fervent plea for peace",^[54] 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."^[55]

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."^[56] – 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."^[57] 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, 1978) ^[58]

• [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, 1981) ^[4]

• 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, 1981) ^[59]

• [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, 1982) ^[2]

• 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) ^[60]

• 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, 1985) ^[61]

• 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, 1996) ^[23]

• 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) ^[34]

Awards and honors

• 1978 – Soho Weekly News SoHo Arts Award in Avant-Garde Dance (New Dance) for Not Necessarily Recognizable Objectives^[62][63]
• 1981 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1984 – Bessie Award, for Framework, The Photographer and sustained achievement^[64]
• 1987 – Guggenheim Fellowship
• 1988 – Primetime Emmy Award 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^[64]
• 1992 – Obie Award, for The Mysteries and What's So Funny^[65]
• 1994 – Obie Award, with Ain Gordon and Valda Setterfield, for The Family Business^[65]
• 1995 – National Theatre Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the Theatre Communications Group
• 1996 – National Dance Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the New York Foundation for the Arts^[66]
• 1997 – Drama-Logue Awards, Outstanding Achievement in Theatre, Direction and Choreography, for Shlemiel the First
• 2001 – Bessie Award, for FAMILY$[e-mail]^[64]
• 2010 – American Masterpieces: Dance, National Endowment for the Arts, for Dancing Henry Five

See also

	Dance portal
	Theatre portal
	Musical theatre portal
	Biography portal

avant-garde Dance Theater Workshop            Danspace Mikhail Barishnikov Trisha Brown Merce Cunningham

Ain Gordon The Grand Union Judson Dance Theatre musical theatre performance art Pick Up Performance Company

postmodernism postmodern dance Yvonne Rainer Twyla Tharp Valda Setterfield

References

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Craine, Debra and Mackrell, Judith. Oxford Dictionary of Danced New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0198601069
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Croce, Arlene. "Profiles: Making Work". The New Yorker (November 29, 1982)
3. ^ Friedman, Lisa. "David Gordon: A Cult Choreographer Takes Center Stage". Dial (August 1986)
4. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Smith, Amanda. "David Gordon: Keeping the Options Open" Dancemagazine (February 1981)
5. ^ Jowitt, Deborah:

   Gordon makes polished patterns out of shambling, plebian movement.

   "'Don't You Wonder What He's Thinking?' 'No'" Village Voice (May 29, 1978)
6. ^ Banes, Sally:

   In the debate on theatricality among post-Cunningham choreographers, Gordon stands in favor of spectacle. But he uses spectacular moments and glamorous touches cunningly, often intensifying them until a gap between the movement relationships and their extravagant theatrical overlay throws the movement into high relief.

   "David Gordon, or, The Ambiguities" Village Voice (May 1, 1978)
7. ^ ^{a b c} Carroll, Noel. "Frieze Frame" Soho Weekly News (December 6, 1979)
8. ^ ^{a b} Croce, Arlene "Dancing: Life Studies" The New Yorker (June 18, 1984)
9. ^ ^{a b} Smith, Amanda. "Autobiography and the Avant-Garde". Dancemagazine (January 1985)
10. ^ Reiter, Susan. "Man in Demand" Ballet News (May 1985)
11. ^ Banes, Sally. "David Gordon, or, The Ambiguities" Village Voice (May 1, 1978)
12. ^ Gordon:

    [A]s a fine arts major in college, I followed an exceedingly attractive young woman wearing peculiar earrings with live guppies in them to what turned out to be the Modern Dance Club. Being six feet tall and male, I was immediately put into a performance. At the same time I met another young woman from the Theatre Department who got me to go to an audition for Dark of the Moon. Two young men were vying vehemently for the role of the witch boy when I walked in, and the director said to me, "Hey you at the back of the room. Come up here and read." I amazed myself by performing with something resembling a southern accent, and immediately got the part.

    Gordon, David. Remarks made during the "Collaboration: Investigating New Forms" session at the Theatre Communications Group National Conference in June 1982. Published in "TCG Focus: Combining Forces" in Theatre Communications (January 1983)
13. ^ ^{a b} Robertson, Allen. "Valda Setterfield - The early years" Dance Theatre Journal (Autumn 1985).

    Vaughan and Setterfield have remained good friends, and he appeared via photograph as the Pope in Gordon's An Audience with the Pope, as well as in Ain Gordon's Art, Life & Show Biz, again by image only. Vaughan has had a long career as a dancer, choreographer, actor, singer and, notably, the long-time archivist for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company He is also a prolific dance writer and a scholar on the work of Frederick Ashton.

14. ^ Banes, Sally. "Earthly Bodies: Judson Dance Theater" in Perron, Wendy and Cameron, Daniel J. (eds.) Judson Dance Theater: 1962-1966 (exhibition catalogue) Bennington, Vermont: The Bennington College Judson Project, 1981.
15. ^ McDonagh, Don. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance. New York: New American Library, 1970. p.272
16. ^ Silver Pieces (Fragments) was performed under two different names, "Fragments" in Philadelphia and "Silver Pieces" at the Judson Church. The evening-long piece was created from odds and ends of unfinished and abandoned solos and duets for Gordon and Setterfield, tied together with the visual device of a television set, but with no other thematic connection between the constituent parts. In 1981, Gordon wrote that for the New York performance:

    I used my home television set sprayed silver. Valda and I wore tights and leotards sprayed silver and plastic child wigs (like swimming caps) sprayed silver ... [Critic] Don McDonagh said in The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance that the dance ". . . was a choreographic look at the ruins of humanity in some horribly projected future." So much for the intention of the artist, or the lack of it.

    Gordon, David. "Fragments" in Perron, Wendy and Cameron, Daniel J. (eds.) Judson Dance Theater: 1962-1966 (exhibition catalogue) Bennington, Vermont: The Bennington College Judson Project, 1981.
17. ^ McDonagh, Don. The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance. New York: New American Library, 1970. p.279-281
18. ^ ^{a b} Gordon, David. "It's About Time" The Drama Review v.19 n.1 (March 1975)
19. ^ ^{a b} Banes, Sally. "An Interview with David Gordon" Eddy: About Dance (Winter 1977)
20. ^ Gordon:

    I spent about six years in a company called The Grand Union, which was composed of six to nine artists. All performances, which generally lasted about two hours, were totally improvised. We didn't always know how many of us would be there or what we would be looking like, or who would leave halfway through.

    Gordon, David. Remarks made during the "Collaboration: Investigating New Forms" session at the Theatre Communications Group National Conference in June 1982. Published in "TCG Focus: Combining Forces" in Theatre Communications (January 1983)
21. ^ See "About David Gordon: Resume" on choreographer Margaret Jenkins's website for a list of productions
22. ^ Smith, Karen. "David Gordon's The Matter" The Drama Review v.16 n.3 (September 1972)
23. ^ ^{a b c} Copeland, Roger. "The Double Identity of David Gordon" Dance Theatre Journal v. 13 n.2 (Autumn/Winter 1996)
24. ^ Museum of Modern Art, Department of Drawings. "Painters for the Theater, Drawings Gallery, July 14-October 18, 1989, Checklist" Four pages of Gordon's score were part of this exhibition, ascension numbers 127.84.a–d "Untitled study for the performance THE MATTER, performed by the Merce Cunningham Company, Oberlin College, Ohio and New York, 1972. (c. 1971-1972)"
25. ^ Gordon learned the craft of display work at Saks Fifth Avenue and Best & Co., and for many years did the windows of the Japanese-based Azuma chain of retail stores in New York.
26. ^ Gordon also did other work in the visual arts. His life-sizes collages made from torn colored no-seam paper were used as backgrounds for photographs of scientists in a Life magazine spread, which was later published in Modell, Walter; Lansing, Alfred and the editors of Life. "When Natural Defenses Fail" in Life Science Library: Drugs. New York: Time-Life Books, 1967, pp.102-119 except p.117.
27. ^ Croce, Arlene. "Dancing: Slowly Then the History of Them Comes Out". The New Yorker (June 30, 1980)
28. ^ "Making Dances" on the Michael Blackwood Productions website
29. ^ Stamler, Gayle. "'United States' comes together" in ACUCAA Bulletin (October 1988)
30. ^ ^{a b} Croce, Arlene. "Dancing: Opus Posthumous". The New Yorker (July 8, 1985)
31. ^ Feingold, Michael (ed.) Grove New American Theater New York: Grove Press, 1994. ISBN 0802132782
32. ^ According to Alvin Klein, writing in the New York Times:

    "Shlemiel" is choreographed and directed by Mr. Gordon who, it appears, regards its eight musicians (the Klezmer Conservatory Band) as cast members in an interweaving of music and moving stage pictures, of words, spoken and sung. It can be said that Singer is the original author, Mr. Brustein is the adapter and Mr. Gordon is the auteur.

    Klein, Alvin. "Theater: 'Shlemiel' Continues A Path to Broadway" New York Times (April 9, 1995)
33. ^ Cox, Gordon. "TFANA sets 2011-12 season". Variety (August 10, 2011)
34. ^ ^{a b} Kourlas, Gia. "Rehearsing for Dance And for Life". New York Times (January 6, 2002)
35. ^ "Some Kind of Wind in the Willows" on GinaLeishman.com
36. ^ Houston, Lynn. "Bodies of History and Historical Bodies: Baryshnikov and the Judson Legacy: White Oak at Gammage Auditorium, Tempe, Arizona, October 15, 2000" in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (Volume 23, Number 3), September 2001, pp. 13-19, abstract
37. ^ "FY 2010 Grant Awards: American Masterpieces: Dance" on the National Endowment for the Arts website
38. ^ "Beginning of the End" on Pick Up Performnce Co(s) website
39. ^ Levy, Suzanne. "ABT's Vandalized 'Chair'" Washington Post (c.January 1985)
40. ^ Hanna. William John. "It Was I" (Letter to the editor). Washington Post (January 5, 1985)
41. ^ Zakariasen, Bill. "Remarkable debut show from ABT" New York Daily News (May 3, 1985)
42. ^ Tobias, Tobi. "The Best and the Brightest" New York (May 13, 1985)
43. ^ Duffy, Martha. "Smiles of a Winter Night" Time (February 25, 1985)
44. ^ Shapiro, Laura. "The Turning Point" Newsweek (February 25, 1985)
45. ^ Horn, Laurie. "ABT opens season with humor, romance". Miami Herald (January 24, 1985)
46. ^ Bernheimer, Martin. "Dancing with Stars, Smirks and Chairs". Los Angeles Times (March 7, 1985)
47. ^ Croce, Arlene. "Dancing: Experiments" The New Yorker (January 28, 1985)
48. ^ Kisselgoff, Anna. "Ballet Theater: A New Work by David Gordon" New York Times (April 29, 1985)
49. ^ ^{a b} Kaufman, Sarah. "Positions of Power" Washington Post (May 14, 2007)
50. ^ Rockwell, John. "Reverberations: Three Shakespeares, Each With a Purpose, Each Hoping to Thrill" New York Times (January 16, 2004)
51. ^ La Rocco, Claudia. "David Gordon Takes on Shakespeare" in 'Dancing Henry Five'" Associated Press (January 12, 2004)
52. ^ Jowitt, Deborah. "O For A Muse of Fire" Village Voice (January 14, 2000)
53. ^ Howard, Rachel. "'Dancing Henry Five' puts the Bard's king in spare milieu touching on current events" San Francisco Chronicle (May 19, 2007)
54. ^ Jowitt, Deborah. "But if the cause be not good..." 'DanceBeat (October 9, 2011)
55. ^ Macauley, Alastair. "Ships, Steeds and Kings, on Two Legs" New York Times (October 7, 2011)
56. ^ Phillips, Michael. "When Silent Was Golden" Los Angeles Times (August 13, 1999)
57. ^ Kourlas, Gia. "'I'm always thinking I've failed'" Time Out New York (July 24–30, 2008)
58. ^ Carroll, Noel. "Formal Dancing" Soho Weekly News (October 12, 1978)
59. ^ Banes, Sally. "Icon and Image in New Dance" in New Dance USA (festival catalogue) Minneapolis: Walker Arts Center, 1981
60. ^ Robertson, Allen. "Clever Cookie" Ballet News (March 1982)
61. ^ Aloff, Mindy. "Dance: Field, Chair and Mountain; Einstein on the Beach" The Nation (February 16, 1985)
62. ^ "Winners of the First Annual Soho Arts Awards" Soho Weekly News (June 15, 1978)
63. ^ Smith, Nancy Stark. "David Gordon & Valda Setterfield Talk about Labels, Madmen, Vanity and more". Contact Quarterly v.4 n.2 (Winter 1979)
64. ^ ^{a b c} Complete List of Bessie winners
65. ^ ^{a b} Obies search
66. ^ Roca, Octavio. "Jenkins, Tomasson Win $100,000 Dance Grants" San Francisco Chronicle (December 29, 1966)

Further reading

• Banes, Sally (ed.) Reinventing Dance in the 1960's: Everything Was Possible University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. ISBN 029918014X

External links

• Official website
• Artistic statement by Gordon
• Video excerpts from works

Persondata
Name	Gordon, David
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1936
Place of birth	Lower East Side Manhattan, New York City
Date of death
Place of death