David Gordon (dance)

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David Gordon is a dancer, choreographer, writer and theatrical director prominent in the world of postmodern dance.

David Gordon performed in the companies of James Waring and Yvonne Rainer in the 1960s, when he was a founding artist in the Judson Church dance performances and also showed dances at the Living Theatre. In the 1970s he was a founding member of the improvisational group, The Grand Union. In 1971 he formed the Pick Up Performance Company (incorporated in 1978 as a non-profit organization), which helps to support and administer his work in live performance and media. He is a Guggenheim Fellow (1981 and 1987) and has been a panelist and chairman of the dance program panel of the National Endowment for the Arts. His video work has appeared on Great Performances, KTCA's Alive TV, the BBC, and Channel 4 in Great Britain.

The Mysteries and What's So Funny? (1991), written and directed by Gordon with music by Philip Glass and visual design by Red Grooms, was awarded a Bessie Award and an Obie Award. The script was published in Grove New American Theater, edited by Michael Feingold.

Gordon 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.

In 1994, for the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the American Music Theatre Festival (AMTF) in Philadelphia, Gordon directed and choreographed the original production of Shlemiel the First, written by Robert Brustein, based on the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, set to traditional klezmer music with new lyrics by Arnold Weinstein. Subsequent productions have been seen at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles (for which Gordon won Dramalogue Awards for best direction and choreography in 1997) and the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco. The show also toured throughout Florida and in the Northeast.

Gordon received a National Theatre Artist Residency Grant (funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by TCG) 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 text 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. They also collaborated on The First Picture Show with music by Jeanine Tesori, for ACT and the Taper.

Other productions David Gordon has created as writer, director and choreographer include Autobiography of a Liar (1999), FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy (2001) and Private Lives of Dancers (2002).

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 has been seen in New York, Minneapolis and Lawrence, Kansas, and is scheduled to be presented in 2007 at the University of Maryland, in Lexington, Kentucky, and in San Francisco.

He has adapted and directed Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs (presented in London, Seattle and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City), Aristophanes' The Birds (2006) and Berthold Brecht and Hanns Eisler's's The Roundheads and the Pointheads (2002-2007). Gordon has choreographed dances for, among other companies, American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project, for whom he also wrote and directed the retrospective of postmodern dance, Past/Forward in 2000.

David Gordon is married to Valda Setterfield, a dancer and actress who was for many years a featured performer with the Merce Cunningham dance company, and now appears regularly in Gordon's pieces, as well as elsewhere.