The Birth of the Judson Dance Theatre: "A Concert of Dance" at Judson Church, July 6, 1962 Author(s): Sally Banes Source: Dance Chronicle, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1982), pp. 167-212 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1567516 Accessed: 22-02-2017 20:09 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Dance Chronicle This content downloaded from 65.51.58.192 on Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:09:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Birth of the Judson Dance Theatre: "A Concert of Dance" at Judson Church, July 6, 1962 Sally Banes The Judson Dance Theatre was a loosely organized "collective" for avant-garde choreography in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. From 1962 to 1964, members of the group met weekly to present choreography for criticism and they also cooperatively produced twenty concerts of dance-sixteen group programs and four evenings of choreography by individuals. The Judson Dance Theatre became the focus of a new stage in American modern dance, the seedbed out of which post-modern dance developed over the next two decades. The Judson Dance Theatre, which grew out of a choreography class taught by Robert Dunn, drew on and consolidated various currents of avant-garde choreography in the 1950s-most notably developing from Anna Halprin, James Waring, and Merce Cunning- ham. It was a vital gathering place for artists in various fields who exchanged ideas and methods, seeking explicitly to explore, propose, and refute definitions of dance as an art form. The issues that con- cerned the group ranged from training and technique to choreographic process, music, performance style, and materials. There was no single prevailing aesthetic in the group; rather, an effort was made to preserve an ambiance of diversity and freedom. This attitude gave rise to certain themes and styles: an attention to choreographic ? 1982 by Sally Banes 167 This content downloaded from 65.51.58.192 on Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:09:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 168 DANCE CHRONICLE process and and the the use use of methodsof methods that metaphoricallythat metaphorically stood for stood for democracy; the the use use of languageof language as an asintegral an integral part of partthe dance; of the dance; the useuse of of "natural," "natural," or ordinary,or ordinary, movements; movements; dances abcoutdances dance. abcout dance. The firstfirst concert concert produced produced by the by Judson the Judson Dance Theatre,Dance Theatre, "A "A Concert of of Dance Dance [# [#1 ]," 1 was]," waspresented presented on July on 6, July 1962, 6,at 1962,Judson at Judson Memorial Church. In the spring of 1962, the members of Robert Dunn's choreography class, given at the Merce Cunningham studio, decided to put on a public concert of works they had been showing to each other in class. At the end of the previous year's course there had been a showing of dances for friends at Cunningham's studio in the Living Theatre building at Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. By the end of the second year of the course the class was larger and the students more ambitious. "There was a body of work which it was called a shame to waste without at least a public show- ing, and Judson was asked and they were agreeable. But it was intended as a one-shot concert," John Herbert McDowell remembers. "We decided to put on the concert just for the adventure of it," Steve Paxton adds. "Going out and doing something elsewhere. The Living Theatre was too small." Yvonne Rainer, who had seen the first Judson Poets' Theatre production in the choir loft of Judson Memorial Church, suggested that the class look into holding the concert there. Paxton met with Al Carmines, the minister in charge of the church's arts program, and set up a date for an audition. On the appointed date Paxton, Rainer, Ruth Emerson, and perhaps Robert and Judith Dunn went to the church, where Paxton, Rainer, and Emerson danced. Rainer danced Three Satie Spoons; Emerson, her Timepiece; and Paxton may have performed Transit.* Paxton's memory of the audition is that "it was a pretty weak showing. But they said, 'Fine."' 2 Emerson, who thinks that much of the impetus in planning the concert came from Rainer, who was ready to show her accumulated work, recalls: *The "perhaps" and "may have" suggest some of the problems in reconstructing events nearly twenty years later. There will be a number of places in this account where people's memories differ on a particular point, and there is now no way to arrive at "the truth." This content downloaded from 65.51.58.192 on Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:09:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms JUDSON DANCE THEATRE 169 A CONCERT OF DANCE BILL DAVIS, JUDITH DUNN, ROBERT DUNN, RUTH EMERSON, SALLY GROSS, ALEX HAY, DEBORAH HAY, FRED HERKO, DAVID GORDON, GRETCHEN MACLANE, JOHN HERBERT MCDOWELL, STEVE PAXTON, RUDY PEREZ, YVONNE RAINER, CHARLES ROTMIL, CAROL SCOTHORN, ELAINE SUMMERS, JENNIFER TIPTON JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH 55 WASHINGTON SQUARE SOUTH FRIDAY, 6 JULY 1962, 8: 0 P.M. The flyerflyer designeddesigned by by Steve Steve Paxon Paxon for for "A "A Concert Concert of ofDance," Dance," courtesy courtesy of of William Davis. This content downloaded from 65.51.58.192 on Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:09:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 170 DANCE CHRONICLE Steve andand Yvonne Yvonne and and I went I went down down one onevery very hot evening,hot evening, and I thinkand I Ithink I was askedasked just just because because I was I was around. around. I remember I remember having having the feeling the feeling that AlAl wondered wondered if ifwe'd we'd take take all ourall ourclothes clothes off oroff do orsomething do something ter- ter- rible. WeWe did did a acouple couple of ofpieces. pieces. We Wecame came prepared prepared to be toreally be reallyserious serious and to show him how we worked. I don't even know if he saw all our pieces. After ten minutes he said, "Oh, this is wonderful, this is great. No problem." And we all started laughing.3 Judson Memorial Church, an architecturally eclectic building at 55 Washington Square South, at the corner of Thompson Street, was designed by Stanford White in 1892. Its stained-glass windows were designed by John LaFarge, and its baptistry was built by Herbert Adams from plans by Augustus St. Gaudens. The church itself was built by Edward Judson in memory of his father, Adoniram Judson, who went to Burma in 1811 as one of the first American missionaries. The church, dually affiliated with the American Baptist Church and the United Church of Christ, was a base for labor union organizing in the 1930s and for the civil rights movement, school integration activities, and drug addiction re- habilitation programs in the 1960s. In 1961 the parish played an active role in overturning a ban on folk-singing in Washington Square park-after a year of protests and sit-ins-and in the same year the chief minister, Howard Moody, was elected head of the Village Independent Democrats.4 After World War II, when many of the church's members moved out of the city, Robert Spike, minister from 1948 to 1955, started an arts program, partly out of personal inclination and partly to stimulate the life of the church. Concerts and plays were given and paintings exhibited. Then Moody, who came to the church in 1956, organized the Judson Gallery, which showed works by Pop artists Jim Dine, Tom Wesselman, Daniel Spoerri, Red Grooms, and Claes Oldenburg as early as 1959. The "Judson Group" put on a program of Happenings, Ray Gun Spex, in early 1960; and later that year Dine presented his Apple Shrine, an Environment. A group called the Judson Studio Players performed Faust in the sanctuary of the church in 1959.5 In 1960, when Moody decided to start a resident theatre group in the church, he hired Al Carmines, who had just graduated This content downloaded from 65.51.58.192 on Wed, 22 Feb 2017 20:09:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms JUDSON DANCE THEATRE 171 from Union Theological Seminary, to coordinate the arts program and organize the Judson Poets' Theatre. While at the seminary, Carmines had gone to parties for divinity students at Judson; he also remembers having attended an early Allan Kaprow Happening there. When Carmines heard that there was an opening for someone to run the arts program at the church, he applied for the position. When he became associate minister-on a part-time basis for the first two years, while he earned a master's degree-Carmines continued the church policy of aiding as many artists as possible and supporting the avant-garde without censorship.6 The first production at the Judson Poets' Theatre, on November 18, 1961, was a double bill of one-act plays: Apollinaire's The Breasts of Tiresias and Joel Oppenheimer's The Great American Desert.