David Gordon (July 14, 1936 – January 29, 2022) was an American dancer, choreographer, writer, and theatrical director prominent in the world of postmodern dance and performance.

Gordon was married to Valda Setterfield, a dancer and actress born in England, who was for 10 years a featured soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

[6]Gordon's pieces frequently reference films and other aspects of popular culture,[8] and are often autobiographical, or at least apparently so, with the distinction between true facts and fictionalized autobiography deliberately obscured.

[12][11] 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.

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.

[3][13] 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[14] from England.

The review was devastating, and I wasn't clever enough to understand or use the possible notoriety attached to that performance (after all, obviously no one was bored) in a positive career move.

There was a great sense of liberation that stemmed from John Cage's championing of this philosophy, and Jimmy, among others, was establishing alternatives to the kind of teaching that had dominated modern-dance composition up until then.

[1]In 1971 Gordon returned to making dances when Rainer put him in charge of her classes while she went to India, from which came the material which became Sleepwalking,[5] first performed at Oberlin College and then in New York.

In doing so, he frequently utilizes the contents of thrift stores and makes use of mundane materials such as cardboard, foam core, and gaffers tape, as well as commercially produced items such as clothing racks and rolling ladders.

[notes 9] 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.

[36] 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.

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[37] – and Private Lives of Dancers (2002), all originally presented at Danspace in New York.

[38] 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.

[59][60] The critical response was more generous, calling it "remarkable",[61] "irreverent and clever",[62] "a mesmerizing exploration of partnering",[63] and "one of the most beautiful and distinctive [ballets] in ABT's current repertory",[64] and praising Gordon's "deadpan humor and ... obvious nostalgic affection for things romantic",[65] and his "energy and wit".

[66] 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,"[67] 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.

[68] 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.

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.

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.

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) [79][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.

(Sali Ann Krigsman, 1982) [81]Formed by the polemical 1960s, Gordon seems to be, by nature, an ironist, with an appreciation of paradox, a fascination with the psychology of partnering, an ambivalence about glamour and fame.

(Although it's essential to point out that his attitude toward transformation and magic has more in common with the work of hip, anti-illusionistic conjurors like Penn and Teller than with the overproduced, mysterioso/glitz of David Copperfield.)

(Roger Copeland, 1996) [24]David Gordon is no ordinary choreographer, He understands how to manipulate text and dance so that the result evokes an invigorating place, where thoughtful theater takes on the appearance of being casual.

(Gia Kourlas, 2002) [37][P]erhaps what matters most to Mr. Gordon — even more than the endlessly ambiguous overlaps of life and art — is the way the present is the echo chamber of the past.

The pioneering director and dancer are renowned for the poignant humor of their work together – his uncanny sense of irony has found the ideal vehicle in her straitlaced, British facade.

... As much a playwright as a choreographer, Gordon has deftly used text, gesture and repetition in lauded works for his own Pick Up Performance Co(s) as well companies like American Ballet Theatre.

[A]s a fine arts major in college, I followed an exceedingly attractive young woman wearing peculiar earrings with live guppies in them to what turned out to be the Modern Dance Club.

"Shlemiel" is choreographed and directed by Mr. Gordon who, it appears, regards its eight musicians (the Klezmer Conservatory Band) as cast members in an interweaving of music and moving stage pictures, of words, spoken and sung.