Overview

In August 1960, Anna Halprin taught an experimental workshop attended by Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (along with Trisha Brown and other soon-to-be important artists) on her dance deck on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco. Within two years, Forti’s conceptually forceful Dance Constructions had premiered in Yoko Ono’s loft and Rainer had cofounded the groundbreaking Judson Dance Theater. Radical Bodies reunites Halprin, Forti, and Rainer for the first time inmore than fifty-five years.   Dance was a fundamental part of the art world in the 1960s, the most volatile decade in American art, offering a radical image of bodily presence in a moment of revolutionary change.  Halprin, Forti, and Rainer—all with Jewish roots—found themselves at the epicenter of this upheaval. Each, in her own tenacious, humorous, and critical way, created a radicalized vision for dance, dance making, and, ultimately, for music and the visual arts. Placing the body and performance at the center of debate, each developed corporeal languages and methodologies that continue to influence choreographers and visual artists around the world to the present day, enabling a critical practice that reinserts social and political issues into postmodern dance and art. Published in association with the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara. Exhibition dates: Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara: January 17–April 30, 2017 New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: May 24–September 16, 2017 Events: Pillowtalks, Jacob’s Pillow, Becket, MA: July 1, 2017

Full Product Details

9780520293366

Table of Contents

Reviews

...[an] attractive, large-format volume [that] gives props to 96-year-old Anna Halprin. * The Village Voice *

Through photos, objects and rare footage [featured in the book], the experiments on Ms. Halprin's deck are revealed to be crucial to the Judson revolution and so much that has happened since in New York postmodern dance. * New York Times * ...[an] attractive, large-format volume [that] gives props to 96-year-old Anna Halprin. * The Village Voice *

More than an exhibition catalogue, the text, populated by images of the exhibit's artifacts, offers an absorptive record that celebrates Halprin, Forti, and Rainer's historical oeuvres. While maintaining a critical, discursive perspective, especially in the three grounding essays by the book's editors, the text additionally weaves together artist writings, critical reflection, and personal anecdotes by Forti, John Rockwell, and Morton Subotnick. These supplementary pieces invite the voices of the artist, critic, and collaborator, respectively, giving the book a diverse stylistic ethos that performatively addresses the intangible aspects of its subjects: the body, performance, and time-based materials. * The Drama Review * The book significantly revisit[s] the body of the sixties as a living and breathing resource of inspiration, complexity, and revolution. * The Woman's Art Journal * Through photos, objects and rare footage [featured in the book], the experiments on Ms. Halprin's deck are revealed to be crucial to the Judson revolution and so much that has happened since in New York postmodern dance. * New York Times * ...[an] attractive, large-format volume [that] gives props to 96-year-old Anna Halprin. * The Village Voice *

Author Information

Ninotchka D. Bennahum is a professor of dance history/theory/performance ttudies in the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Antonia Merce, La Argentina: Flamenco and the Spanish Avant Garde and Carmen: a Gypsy Geography. Wendy Perron, author of Through the Eyes of a Dancer, danced with Trisha Brown in the 1970s and choreographed more than forty works for her own group from the 1970s to the 1990s. Former longtime editor in chief of Dance Magazine, she now writes for Dance Europe and teaches at NYU Tisch School for the Arts. Bruce Robertson is a professor in the history of art and architectureand director of the Art, Design, & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara. He has published books and curated exhibitions across a wide range of topics, from the sixteenth century to the present.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available