LUCINDA CHILDS

The Yard Performances

2014
Preview of new work

 

LUCINDA CHILDS

Lucinda Childs Is one of America's most important modern choreographers. She began her career as choreographer and performer in 1963 as an original member of the Judson Dance Theater in New York. After forming her own dance company in 1973, Ms. Childs collaborated with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976 participating as principal performer and solo choreographer for which she received an Obie award. In the subsequent revivals in '84 and '92 Childs choreographed the two "Field Dances," and was cast again as principal performer. Childs has appeared in five of Wilson's major productions among them, Marguerite Duras' Maladie de la Mort opposite Michel Piccoli, I Was Sitting on my Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating opposite Robert Wilson, and Heiner Muller's Quartett, and Wilson and Glass' opera White Raven.

Since 1979, Ms. Childs has collaborated with a number of composers and designers, on a series of large-scale productions. The first of these was Dance, choreographed in 1979 with music by Philip Glass, and a film/decor by Sol LeWitt. It was during rehearsals for Einstein that Childs and Glass came up with the original idea for her seminal work, Dance. Dance continues to tour extensively in the United States and Europe and was cited by the Wall Street Journal (2011), as "one of the greatest achievements of the 20th Century." In a Washington Post review of Dance, Alan M. Kriegsman wrote, "a few times, at most, in the course of a decade a work of art comes along that makes a genuine breakthrough, defining for us new modes of perception and feeling and clearly belonging as much to the future as to the present. Such a work is Dance." Available Light(1983) with music by John Adams and split level set designed by Frank Gehry will be revived for the company's 2014-15 season along with a new work in collaboration with Philip Glass and visual artist, James Turrel.

Since 1981, Ms. Childs has received a number of commissions from major ballet companies and has choreographed and directed several opera productions including: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice for the Los Angeles Opera, Mozart's Zaide for La Monnaie in Brussels, Stravinsky's Le Rossignol et Oedipe, Vivaldi's Farnace, and a new production of John Adams Dr Atomic for the Opera du Rhin in 2014. Most recently she choreographed and directed Handel's Alessandro for Parnassus Arts Productions featuring Max Emanual Cencic in the lead role.

Childs received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. She is also the recipient of the NEA/NEFA American Masterpiece Award, and in 2004 she was elevated from the rank of Officer to Commander in France's Order of Arts and Letters.
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