In sync

GIANT STEPS Lucinda Childs oversees the proceedings.

Photo: Sally Cohn

A Lucinda Childs work is identifiable by dancers skimming along the floor with light footwork, rarely stopping, incessantly drawing delicate lines and arcs through space. The vocabulary is balletic: feet pointed, arms often curved. There is the hint of folk dance in the way spines are held erect and bodies stay upright. Within these parameters, subtle variations create shade and nuance. It’s a stark and rigorous style that arose, contrarily, from the hotbed of freewheeling experimentation that was downtown New York in the 1960s, where Childs was a member of the Judson Dance Theater, a group known for fostering the talents of such iconoclasts as Carolee Schneemann, performance artist, and Steve Paxton, originator of Contact Improvisation.

By the 1970s, Childs was creating with her own small company. “We had no music or decor,” she says. “We performed outdoors, in gymnasiums, on rooftops.” Around that time, she was asked to choreograph for an opera, Einstein on the Beach (still noted as groundbreaking for its avant-garde approach to a classic form)—and it was there she met composer Philip Glass, who shared aesthetics of minimalism, pattern and repetition. “It inspired me to continue a project on my own with Philip,” she says. As they developed the piece that premiered in 1979 as DANCE, it was Glass who suggested visual artist Sol LeWitt, also attached to the concept of minimalism, as a possibility to create decor for their collaboration.

“Philip knew a lot of artists: Brice Marden, Richard Serra,” Childs says. “We had a terrific meeting with Sol.” Childs says LeWitt was initially worried about how to approach the project. “He didn’t see the point of having a visual decor attached to an already visually complex work,” she says. “It was a very worthwhile discussion.”

The artists explored the idea of anti-decor, stripping the theater, taking away the “wings” (side curtains) and placing the dance in “found space,” but in the Judson era, “that statement had already been made,” Childs says. LeWitt’s solution, a filmed backdrop of the dance itself that echoes and magnifies what takes place on the stage, was ahead of its time. It stands—even today when video projection accompanying dance performance is common—as one of the most satisfying blends of live dance and moving-image projection yet created.

“He did it so intelligently, it’s really fascinating” says Childs of LeWitt’s contribution. “It’s a huge plus for the work.” To create the film, LeWitt attended rehearsals and designed all the shots with an uncomplicated setup of three different camera angles. He also studied the written notes that Childs made as she choreographed.

“I like to notate, in simple graphic ways, the patterns that show the relationship of the dancers to each other and to the music,” Childs says. “It’s an overhead view, a two-dimensional map like a storyboard that shows the dance rectangle by rectangle.” When it comes to defining the actual movements that the dancers do with their arms and legs, however, Childs’s approach is less intellectual, more the instincts of a dancer who trained with greats Hanya Holm and Merce Cunningham. “I work in the studio, dancing, improvising. It’s an intuitive process. I’m not sure what—if anything—is going to happen.”

DANCE remains one of Childs’s signature works. It is simply and aptly titled. “There’s no way to describe it,” says the choreographer. “It’s four pairs of dancers. The whole thing is about movement.”

A revival of DANCE glides across the MCA Stage Friday 16 and Saturday 17, as well as during a gala celebration with Childs and Glass Thursday 15.

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