A Steady Pulse

Restaging Lucinda Childs, 1963–78

Interior Drama. Dancers left to right are Lucinda Childs, Daniel McCusker, Judy Padow, Cynthia Hedstrom, and Andé Peck, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1977. Photo © Nathaniel Tileston (1977). Courtesy of Lucinda Childs.

This publication, which grew out of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s research interests, is an excavation and reexamination of Lucinda Childs’ “dances in silence”—those through which she found her compositional voice as a dance artist. It includes video of eight early works, re-performed in Philadelphia and Bronxville, New York, between 2009 and 2013 but dating from 1963 to 1978; a specially commissioned animation of Childs’ 158-page score for Melody Excerpt (1977); newly released essays on the restagings, Judson Dance Theater, and Childs’ “dances in silence,” including two by Childs herself; video-taped readings by Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer of letters they wrote to Childs in 1964 and 1968 respectively; and a rich archive of photographs, scores, flyers, and programs.