On View: November 21-November 23
Location TBA
Time:
November 21–23, 2025, 11am and 12pm daily – Tickets $30
On July 23, 1964, Lucinda Childs premiered Street Dance, a site-specific piece now widely recognized as a seminal work of American postmodern dance. Created as an assignment from Robert Ellis Dunn to the dancers of the Judson Dance Theater, the six-minute piece marked a pivotal moment in experimentation between dance and new media. Street Dance (1964–2025) is a reenactment of the original piece to be staged just a few blocks from the initial performance location.
The piece originally opened at Judith Dunn’s studio on East Broadway and later, at Robert Rauschenberg’s request, from his studio at 812 Broadway in Manhattan. Childs played an audio recording instructing the audience to look out the window, while she descended to the street below to meet James Lee Byars. On the sidewalk across the street, performers gestured toward architectural details, street furniture, and shop windows. These movements were precisely synchronized with the audio playing in the loft above. The choreographer explains that “the result was that the spectator was called upon to envision, in an imagined sort of way, information that in fact existed beyond the range of actual perception”, creating “a perceptual bond.” Unaware of the performance, passersby continued with their routines, allowing the choreography to seamlessly merge with the city’s everyday gestural landscape.
Street Dance significantly influenced members of the Judson. Steve Paxton cited the work in developing his exploration of pedestrian movement in Satisfyin Lover (1967) and State (1968). Yvonne Rainer used recorded sound to synchronized action in Parts of Some Sextets (1965). For Childs, the piece marked a milestone in the development of her approach to scoring and questioning the relationship between sound, image, and live performance, which would become central to her proscenium works such as Dance (1979).
The project will feature Lucinda Childs herself and David Thomson. An accompanying archival exhibition will contextualize the work and be on display at the performance site. The film documentation created during the performance will join the touring exhibition Lucinda Childs — Between Prediction and Speculation (2026).
Curated by Lou Forster and produced by The Blanket, the project is co-produced and co-commissioned by The Kitchen, Frac Bretagne, Frac Franche-Comté, and the Centre d’art Le Lait, with the support from Villa Albertine. A film of the performance will be included in the upcoming touring exhibition Lucinda Childs — Between Prediction and Speculation.
Bios
Lucinda Childs is a world-renowned choreographer who, in addition to work for her own group, Lucinda Childs Dance Company, has choreographed over thirty works for major ballet companies around the world. She began her career as choreographer in the 1960s, as a member of the Judson Dance Theater. In 1979, she choreographed one of her most enduring works, Dance, with music by Philip Glass and film décor by Sol LeWitt, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. In September of this year she will direct a new production of Philip Glass’ Satyagraha. Childs holds the rank of Commandeur in France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she received the Golden Lion award from the Venice Biennale and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival award for lifetime achievement.
David Thomson is a collaborative interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on the interrogation of presence and absence in the performance of identity. He has worked with Trisha Brown (87-93), Ralph Lemon, Sekou Sundiata, Marina Abramović, Alain Buffard, Yvonne Rainer, Meg Stuart, Maria Hassabi, Okwui Okpokwasili/Peter Born, and Matthew Barney, among many others. Thomson was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Sustained Achievement (2001), and for Outstanding Production (2018). Awards and fellowships include US Artists, Yaddo, MacDowell, Rauschenberg, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Alpert Award. In 2017, he initiated The Artist Sustainability Project to expand the practice and discourse of financial, artistic, and personal empowerment.
Funding Support and Credits
The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from the Manhattan Borough President, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Kitchen acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York(CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York.