Lucinda Childs

Lucinda Childs (born June 26, 1940) is an American postmodern dancer and choreographer. Her compositions are known for their minimalistic movements yet complex transitions. Childs is most famous for being able to turn the slightest movements into intricate choreography. Through her use of patterns, repetition, dialect, and technology, she has created a unique style of choreography that embraces experimentation and transdisciplinarity.

Personal life and early career Lucinda Childs was born in New York City. She began dancing at the age of six at the King-Coit School. At age eleven, Childs was introduced to Tanaquil LeClercq from the New York City Ballet. LeClercq had inspired Childs to pursue dance, but Childs found that she could not execute everything perfectly. When she met the actress Mildred Dunnock, her ambition shifted to becoming an actress.

Continuing her dance training, she studied with Harriet Ann Gray and Helen Tamiris at the Perry-Mansfield of Theatre and Dance.

Later career and acting Lucinda Childs choreographed steadily until 1968 when she decided to take a break and focus on her own style of dance. During this break, she experimented with her choreography exploring different methods.

After opening her own dance company, The Lucinda Dance Company in 1973, Childs collaborated with the likes of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Childs, Glass and Wilson joined together on the opera Einstein On The Beach. Childs participated as the leading performer and choreographer and won an Obie Award for Best Actress for her performance. She also appeared in a show titled I Was Sitting on My Patio This Guy Appeared I Thought I Was Hallucinating in 1977. Childs also originated the role of Hubert Page in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs Off-Broadway in 1982. Janet McTeer would later go on to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing the role opposite Glenn Close.

Since 1992, Childs has worked primarily in the field of opera, starting with Luc Bondy's production of Richard Strauss's Salome. While this is not the first time her company has closed, this does appear to be the last.

Childs's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

Style "As one of America's leading modern dance choreographers, she makes work which can often be described as conceptual dance." While her minimalist movements were simple, the beauty in her choreography lay in her spatial exploration. Her work captivates the splendor of the different patterns the human body can create across a stage by basic repeated movements such as skipping or turning. She would create an entire performance piece based on one simple combination that would be repeated numerous times but in a different way. Whether she takes apart and reorders the combination or simply reverses it the same movements would not be repeated as they were initially introduced. Often, pieces she choreographed, such as Street Dance (1964), were accompanied by a monologue that would explain not only her movements but what it's about.

In a 2018 interview conducted by Rachel F. Elson of Dance Magazine, Childs states that she is "responding to the music" when she choreographs. She will listen to the music then think about all the different sequences, trying to figure out "where there could be musical transitions that we abide by, and where there are ones we don't abide by". Childs approached this piece from all different angles exploring dialect, architecture, and staging. The piece asked its viewers to look beyond what was in front of them and instead use different senses to visualize the unseen. This dance has only been performed three times, the most recent being the 2013 Philadelphia revival. In the revival, the dancers used stop-watches for timing purposes. The story was meant to be up to the audience to decide and that became an essential part of the piece itself. Childs' solo in Act I Scene 1 was structurally linked to the three visual and musical motifs of the opera. Childs also embodied many different characters within this solo through her gestures. The choreography for this piece came about through structured improvisation guided by Robert Wilson. Each couple and soloist moves along the stage in a grid-like pattern. A projection of a filmed version of Dance (1979) allows the audience to view the piece from multiple angles at once, adding to the sense of a grid and geometric, abstract patterns.

Dance (1979) was composed of three ensemble sections containing eight dancer or four couples, then there were two soloist sections. Spoken word about the loss experienced at that time overlays the music. The messages were alphabetically arranged in the piece. The piece in its entirety is 30 minutes long with text coming in every six seconds. There were a lot of props in the first half, and it was all mainly performed through improvisation. 1968- Untitled Trio 1973- Untitled Trio 2 1973- Particular Reel 1973- Checkered Drift 1973- Calico Mingling 1975- Reclining Rondo 1975- Congeries on Edges for 20 Oblique's 1976- Katema 1976- Radial Courses 1976- Transverse Exchanges 1976- Cross Words 1976- Figure Eights 1976- Einstein on the Beach 1977- Melody Excerpt 1977- Plaza 1977- Interior Drama 1979- Dance 1-5 1981- Mad Rush 1981- Relative Calm 1982- Formal Abandon Part 1 1982- Formal Abandon Part 2 1983- Available Light 1983- Formal Abandon Part 3

1984- Cascade 1984- Outline 1984- Field Dances 1986- Portraits in Reflection 1986- Clarion 1986- Hungarian Rock 1987- Calyx 1989- Mayday 1990- Perfect Stranger 1990- Four Elements 1991- Rhythm Plus 1992- Salome 1993- Concerto 1993- One and One 1993- Impromptu 1994- Chamber Symphony 1994- Trilogies 1995- Commencement 1995- Solstice 1995- From the White Edge Oh Phrygia 1995- Zaide (Director) 1996- Hammerklavier 1996- Don Carlos 2000- Chairman Dances 2007- Symphony of Psalms 2011- Océana 2013- Kilar 2015- Canto Ostinato 2016- Grosse Fugue by Ludwig van Beethoven, Opéra National de Lyon 2018- Petricor 2019- THE DAY 2020- Akhnaten, Opéra de Nice