David Gordon

Style and process

Like most postmodernists in dance, Gordon employed pedestrian movement in his work, 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. He was quoted as saying "I [want] to use mundane means to a magical end." 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."

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." 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. His pieces often employ humor, sometimes in self-deprecation, 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. 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, 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.

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.

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 Vaughan 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, 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. 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.

1980s

In 1980, Gordon gave up his job creating window displays, which for 18 years had supported both his work and his family – his son Ain was born in 1962 – to work full-time as a performer and choreographer. He also appeared in two seminal documentaries about postmodern dance, Beyond the Mainstream: The Postmoderns, part of the PBS Dance in America series, and Michael Blackwood's Making Dances, which focused on seven choreographers: aside from Gordon, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Douglas Dunn, Kenneth King, Meredith Monk and Sara Rudner.

In the 1980s, his Pick-Up Company toured throughout the United States, performing both intimate pieces such as:

Close Up (1979) – a duet for Gordon and Setterfield – and

Dorothy and Eileen (1980), in which two female dancers improvise dialogue about their mothers – which has been called "[o]ne of his most successfully conceived and rendered pieces";

as well as larger-scale works, including:

T.V. Reel (1982);

Trying Times (1982) – which ends with Gordon being put on trial by his dancers; this piece and Framework which followed it feature "visual devices" by artist Power Boothe – open wooden frames, canvas cloths painted with diagonal stripes, and painted Masonite boards, as well as a double-hinged construction of wood-framed heavy cardboard panels which was manipulated by the dancers into numerous different patterns which they then interacted with – some of which will later be used in Dancing Henry V.

Framework (1983);

My Folks (1984) – set to klezmer music, Eastern European Jewish folk music, which Gordon had grown up with, not knowing what it was;

Four Men Nine Lives (1985);

Transparent Means for Traveling Light (1986) – performed to a score by John Cage;

1990s

The Mysteries and What's So Funny? (1991), in which Marcel Duchamp – played by Setterfield – is the central figure around which all the action swirls, received a Bessie and an Obie Award. It was written, directed and choreographed by Gordon with music again by Philip Glass and visual design by Red Grooms. The script was published in Grove New American Theater. Gordon then 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. The cast for The Family Business consisted of both Gordons, father and son, and Setterfield.

In 1994, for the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the American Music Theatre Festival (AMTF) in Philadelphia, Gordon directed and choreographed an original musical, Shlemiel the First, adapted by Robert Brustein from the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, and 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 Drama-Logue Awards for his direction and choreography in 1997 – and the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. The show also toured throughout Florida and in Stamford, Connecticut, and was re-mounted in 2010 at Montclair State University's Alexander Kasser Theatre by Peak Performances. This production was re-mounted by Theatre for a New Audience in Manhattan, New York City in late 2011, at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, in association with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.

In 1993 Gordon received a National Theatre Artist Residency Grant, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by Theatre Communications Group, to work with the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he directed and choreographed The Firebugs by Max Frisch for their mainstage in 1995. He also received a 1996 Pew National Dance Residency Artist Grant, administered by the New York Foundation for the Arts, becoming the only artist to receive residency grants from Pew in both theater and dance.

Ain and David Gordon collaborated again on the book and direction 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. The piece began in 1991 as a one-act television program made for KTCA for their PBS series Alive TV, and had a second life as a dance piece, set to music by Carl Stalling, for Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project in 1992. In 1999, the Gordons worked together once more, this time on a musical about women directors in the early days of motion pictures, The First Picture Show, with music by Jeanine Tesori, for ACT in San Francisco and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

2000s–2020s

Other productions Gordon has created as writer, director and choreographer include Autobiography of a Liar (1999), FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy (2001) – for which he received his third Bessie Award – and Private Lives of Dancers (2002), all originally presented at Danspace in New York. In 2000, he was commissioned by ACT to write an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, with music by Gina Leishman, called Some Kind of Wind in the Willows. This production was workshopped but was never produced. In that same year, he assembled and directed for Baryshnikov's White Oak Project a retrospective program of postmodern dance, PAST/Forward, which included pieces by Gordon, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown.

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 received an American Masterpiece Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Dance Program, and has been seen in New York; the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis; the University of Kansas; the University of Maryland; Lexington, Kentucky; and ODC/Dance in San Francisco. In 2011 it was revived and performed at Montclair State University in New Jersey, Columbia College in Chicago and the University of Albany, New York.

Gordon has also adapted, directed and choreographed a number of classic theater works:

Eugène Ionesco's The Chairs (2004, presented in London, Seattle and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City) – in which he and Setterfield played the Old Man and the Old Woman to a solo cello score composed by Michael Gordon (no relation) and performed by Wendy Sutter both live and pre-recorded;

He Who Gets Slapped (2004, for Theatre for a New Audience in New York);

Aristophanes' The Birds (2006, as Aristophanes in Birdonia);

The Roundheads and the Pointheads by Bertholt Brecht with music by Hanns Eisler (2002–2009, as Uncivil Wars: Moving with Brecht and Eisler), commissioned by the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and The Kitchen in New York City, and also performed at Montclair State University. The piece was workshopped at Cornell University, and was later re-explored in Philadelphia in 2014 under the title Political Shenanigans.

Death

Gordon died in his loft studio home – located in SoHo in lower Manhattan, New York City – on January 29, 2022, at the age of 85. He and Setterfield had celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary the night before.

Legacy

In late 2025 and early 2026, choreographer Wally Cardona "excavated", expanded and extended Gordon's piece "Times Four", originally made in 1975 as a duet for Gordon and Valda Setterfield. Based on a single existing rehearsal video tape, photographs and Setterfield's handwritten notes, Cardona recreated the piece and then made additional choreography founded in part on his research into Gordon's other works and in part on his own responses to the original. The resulting full-length dance, Times Four / David Gordon: 1975/2025, was presented in the same SoHo loft where the piece was originally created and performed, and where Gordon and Setterfield lived. It was danced by Cardona and Molly Lieber.

Reception

Gordon's work was generally well received by the critics and the public, although his piece Field, Chair and Mountain for American Ballet Theatre, his first ballet, was reportedly booed at its 1985 premiere at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C. The critical response was more generous, calling it "remarkable", "irreverent and clever", "a mesmerizing exploration of partnering", and "one of the most beautiful and distinctive [ballets] in ABT's current repertory", and praising Gordon's "deadpan humor and ... obvious nostalgic affection for things romantic", and his "energy and wit". However, Arlene Croce in The New Yorker said that the ballet was "the kind of folly that advances to the limit of frivolity on the strength of passion," and in The New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff wrote that "Despite [its] original aspects, "Field, Chair and Mountain" does not add up to anything beyond its isolated parts. Mr. Gordon's ideas seem dressed up in opera-house trappings that hang like ill-fitting clothes".

Twenty years later, Gordon, who had not previously considered himself to be a political artist, created Dancing Henry Five in response to the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq. It also received mostly positive critical response. It was called "a bare-bones production that created a powerful epic mood" by John Rockwell, who compared it favorably to a production of Henry V at Lincoln Center. Other critics praised its "humor and deft movement", its "masterful blend of charm and sting", and called it "stunning and provocative", while describing the movement in the dance-theater piece as "stripped down and democratic". "It takes a witty craftsman of dance theater like Gordon to turn a heroically jingoistic play into a wry but fervent plea for peace", wrote one critic about the most recent revival of the piece, while another wrote that "The means are simple, the dancing far from virtuoso; the thought and meanings are complex."

However, several years prior to the success of Dancing Henry Five, Gordon collaborated with Ain Gordon and composer Jeanine Tesori on the stage musical The First Picture Show, about female directors in the early days of the movie business, which starred Estelle Parsons and Ellen Greene. The piece was extensively workshopped and performed in San Francisco, at the American Conservatory Theater, and in Los Angeles at the Mark Taper Forum, which had commissioned the piece. After the success of Shlemiel the First in L.A. several years before, expectations were high for the new musical, but the critical reception was not overly positive – the critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote: "This tantalizing if unformed project has too vital a subject, or subjects, for mere nostalgia. Occasionally wonderful and never dull, 'The First Picture Show' lacks a certain urgency in its storytelling." – and the production had no commercial transfer after its subscription run. Some years later, in response to a question about whether his career had ever "hit the wall", Gordon said: "I died in L.A.", but acknowledges that he then "came back to New York and began again, choreographing for my own company." One of the results of starting over was Dancing Henry Five.

Analysis and interpretation

Throughout his career, critics and other dance artists have encapsulated Gordon and his work:

Gordon wants to sensitize the spectator to a shifting dialectic between the individual gesture and the larger choreographic structure in which it is embedded. Rather than highlighting the individual gesture as such, Gordon playfully investigates the ways in which a discreet movement in a dance phrase will change in terms of how we perceive it as a result of the position it occupies in systematically varied choreographic complexes. (Noël Carroll, 1978)

[Gordon] has been labelled a formalist, a structuralist, a master wordsmith, an avant-garde comedian, a satirist, a reflexive parodist. His works are profound investigations of correspondences and collisions between language and movement, examinations of the creative and performing processes, explorations of structures. They are also enormously likable and often delightfully humorous. (Amanda Smith, 1981)

In David Gordon's dances, simple movement phrases are reiterated until what you notice is not the movement itself but the distinctiveness of the bodies of the performers. Gordon's genius lies both in his choice of dancers, most noticeably his wife and longtime collaborator Valda Setterfield, and in his gestural vocabulary. Also, his use of language underscores the message of his dances, which is that the body's actions and signals, like words, can change their meaning depending on their context. The phrasing of Gordon's movements is uninflected, fluid, tending to slide comfortably through the memory, so that what you want to pay attention to is the very manner in which these particular interesting figures do whatever it is they are doing. (Sally Banes, 1981)

[L]ongtime observers of Gordon's work would be hard pressed to find a better definition of it than one vast game that he plays with Valda Setterfield. His sense of irony has been bouncing off her level, unassuming façade for years. Since she is always perfectly straight, Gordon's own gift for projecting comic ambiguity in language and movement can shine all the brighter, with an innocence beyond stain. It may be that without Setterfield as chief sounding board and accomplice he would not have developed his double edge at all – at least, not into the guileless satirical instrument it is now. (Arlene Croce, 1982)

Awards and honors

1978 – SoHo Weekly News SoHo Arts Award in Avant-Garde Dance (New Dance) for Not Necessarily Recognizable Objectives

1981 – Guggenheim Fellowship

1984 – Bessie Award, for Framework, The Photographer and sustained achievement

1987 – Guggenheim Fellowship

1988 – Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Classical Music/Dance Programming, Writing for David Gordon's Made in USA

1991 – Bessie Award, for The Mysteries and What's So Funny

1992 – Obie Award, for The Mysteries and What's So Funny

1993 – National Theatre Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the Theatre Communications Group

1994 – Obie Award, with Ain Gordon and Valda Setterfield, for The Family Business

1996 – National Dance Residency, Pew Charitable Trust, administered by the New York Foundation for the Arts

1997 – Drama-Logue Awards (2), Outstanding Achievement in Theatre, for Direction and for Choreography, for Shlemiel the First

2001 – Bessie Award, for FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy

2010 – American Masterpieces: Dance, National Endowment for the Arts, for Dancing Henry Five

2013 – Doris Duke Artist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation