From being taught by Merce Cunningham to collaborating with Philip Glass, the choreographer who helped shape the New York dance scene – now ‘81 on paper’ – looks back
“There was a famous performance in Minneapolis of my piece Dance,” says Lucinda Childs. “Practically no one was in the audience by the end.” She laughs. “We had the same with a Robert Wilson play I was in. We’d look out and see … ‘Well, his sister is there, but that’s about it.’”
The choreographer’s work, including the minimalist classic Dance (1979) set to the music of Philip Glass, the John Adams-scored Available Light (1983) and in Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach (1976), may not have always been appreciated by everyone – “in the US it wasn’t something people could deal with” – but she’s now recognised as a seminal figure. She’s most associated with the Judson Dance Theater and New York’s downtown arts scene of the 60s and 70s, a hub of radical musicians, artists, performers, cheap loft studios and experimental happenings. But Childs has worked steadily since, particularly in Europe, and latterly as an opera director, too.
