David Gordon (July 14, 1936 – January 29, 2022) was an American dancer, choreographer, writer, 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 was a member of the Actors Studio, and was a founder of the Center for Creative Research.
Gordon was 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".Friedman, Lisa (August 1986) "David Gordon: A Cult Choreographer Takes Center Stage". Dial Together they have been called "The Barrymores of postmodern dance" and "two of the most important artists to emerge from New York’s postmodern dance scene." Their son, playwright, actor, and theatrical director Ain Gordon, collaborated with Gordon on a number of projects.
Gordon's work has been archived in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Gordon also created a digital archive called Archiveography which covers both his personal and professional lives.
Style and process
Like most postmodernists in dance, Gordon employed pedestrian movement in his work,Jowitt, Deborah:Gordon makes polished patterns out of shambling, plebian movement.Jowitt, Deborah (May 29, 1978) "'Don't You Wonder What He's Thinking?' 'No'" Village Voice but he was 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.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.Banes, Sally (May 1, 1978) "David Gordon, or, The Ambiguities" Village Voice He was quoted as saying "I [want] to use mundane means to a magical end."Croce, Arlene (November 29, 1982) "Profiles: Making Work". The New Yorker 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."Carroll, Noël (December 6, 1979) "Frieze Frame" SoHo Weekly News
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."Croce, Arlene (June 18, 1984) "Dancing: Life Studies" The New Yorker This is particularly 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 referenced 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.Smith, Amanda (January 1985) "Autobiography and the Avant-Garde". Dancemagazine His pieces often employ humor, sometimes in self-deprecation,Reiter, Susan (May 1985) "Man in Demand" Ballet News and he has been called one of the few "comic spirits" produced by the postmodern dance movement.
Gordon was very aware of the people who performed his works, and frequently tailored the pieces to the specific abilities of the dancers they were constructed on. He said "Dances may be glorious reverberating abstractions or eloquent high-class dance storytelling or thoughtful, emotion-provoking nonlinear narratives, but dancing, no matter what, always seems to be about the people who do it."
Later in life, Gordon was to say "I take on projects I don’t know how to do, and I relish the dangerous journey."
Early life and career Gordon, a native of New York City, was born on July 14, 1936, to Samuel and Rose (Wunderlich) Gordon, both of whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.Craine, Debra and Mackrell, Judith (2000) Oxford Dictionary of Dance New York: Oxford University Press. Kourlas, Gia (February 4, 2022) "David Gordon, a Wizard of Movement and Words, Dies at 85" The New York Times He grew up on the Lower East Side and in Coney Island and graduated from Seward Park High School. Growing up, he saw movies in neighborhood theaters and vaudeville shows uptown and watched television, and these influences – such as Milton Berle on TV and Fanny Brice singing "Second Hand Rose" – later informed his first dance pieces.
After high school, he received a BFA from Brooklyn College,Banes, Sally (May 1, 1978) "David Gordon, or, The Ambiguities" Village Voice where he first studied English and then switched to art under painter Ad Reinhardt, took voice lessons to get rid of his Yiddish accent, and 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.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 (January 1983) 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
Out of college, Gordon got a job dressing the windows at "Azuma" in Greenwich Village, which sold products from Japan. He was to hold this job, which expanded to dressing all the windows in the Azuma chain, well into his dance career, until he made the decision to attempt to make a living as a dancer/choreographer.Gordon, David "Archiveography" website
A chance meeting in Washington Square Park in 1957 – "a scene right out of Hollywood", in his words – led to Gordon joining the dance company of choreographer James Waring, where he met Setterfield, who had recently followed her friend David VaughanRobertson, Allen (Autumn 1985) "Valda Setterfield - The early years" Dance Theatre Journal
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 had a long career as a dancer, choreographer, actor, singer and, notably, the long-time archivist for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company He was also a prolific dance writer and a scholar on the work of Frederick Ashton. from England. Waring was to be a mentor to Gordon, introducing him to John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg, taking him to museums to see modern art, and telling him to watch films by Laurel & Hardy and W. C. Fields, all of which influenced Gordon's later works. He was to perform with Waring's company through 1962. Later in life, Gordon was to curate an exhibition about Waring at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Gordon and Setterfield were married on January 28, 1961,"'60s ARCHIVEOGRAPHY - Part 1" Archiveography website and remained so until his death.
Gordon studied with Merce Cunningham and Louis Horst at the Connecticut College Summer School of Dance, which would later become the American Dance Festival, and in New York took the composition class given by Judith and Robert Dunn, which led to his becoming a founding artist of the Judson Dance Theater concerts at the Judson Church; these began in 1962 and continued through 1966.Banes, Sally. "Earthly Bodies: Judson Dance Theater" in Perron, Wendy and Cameron, Daniel J. (eds.) (1981) Judson Dance Theater: 1962-1966 (exhibition catalogue) Bennington, Vermont: The Bennington College Judson Project 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. He also participated in the "First New York Theater Rally," organized by Steve Paxton and Alan Solomon.Gordon was in the first group to perform Rainer's seminal piece Trio A, along with Rainer and Paxton. Rainer says that Gordon was doubtful at first about his ability to execute it in the proper style. Now I say anyone can master the style, or just about anyone. Rainer, Yvonne (2000) "Statement for PAST/Forward" in Banes (2003), p.210McDonagh (1971) p.272
Gordon's early works included:
Mama Goes Where Poppa Goes (1960) – his first duet for himself and Setterfield, Mannequin Dance (1962),According to Banes, during the performance of Mannequin Dance, choreographer James Waring provided sound accompaniment – billed as "Music" (see Program from "A Concert of Dance" at Judson Church (July 6, 1962) ) – by handing out balloons to the audience and requesting that they be blown up, and then have their air slowly released. Banes (2003), p.50 Helen's Dance (1962), Random Breakfast (1963) – in which Setterfield did a striptease, and Gordon impersonated Milton Berle impersonating Carmen Miranda;Sally Banes writes about Random Breakfast that it parodied the 'Judson Church Dance Factory Gold Rush in which choreography ran rampant' ... Prefabricated Dance, the commentary on Gordon;s own choreographer colleagues, involved improvised instructions on how to make a modern dance. Banes (2003), pp. 13-14 and Silver Pieces (Fragments) (1964).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.) (1981) Judson Dance Theater: 1962-1966 (exhibition catalogue) Bennington, Vermont: The Bennington College Judson Project.