About the Book
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
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