The Dance Boom and the Breaking of the Frame
The 1970s in New York City presented a stark paradox. On one hand, many considered the city to be in a “dismal state,” as it exuded a grimy and often threatening atmosphere. For instance, one could find themselves “overwhelmed by the smell of garbage.” However, amidst this urban decay, artists unleashed an intense creative energy. Consequently, this creativity sparked a “dance boom” that irrevocably transformed the landscape of American performance. As a result, choreographers and dancers increasingly took to the streets and rooftops to create site-specific dance.
The city’s decline created fertile ground for an artistic explosion. Moreover, the “crumbling, half-colonized region” of SoHo offered vast and affordable post-industrial lofts. Consequently, these spaces provided the necessary physical conditions for a new scale of choreographic experimentation. Additionally, the era’s most radical innovation was not a new step or style. Instead, it represented a deliberate and profound migration of dance from the sanctified space of the theater into the fabric of the city itself.
Postmodern choreographers like Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and Yvonne Rainer made innovative use of rooftops, museums, city streets, and historic sites. These locations were not merely backdrops; instead, they acted as active collaborators in their work. As a result, this spatial turn directly extended the counterculture politics that animated the downtown arts scene. Furthermore, it served as an imperative to “Attack all hierarchies!” In doing so, they broke both the physical and conceptual frames that separated art from life.
The 1970s NYC dance boom emerged from urban decay, radically transforming performances by moving them into public spaces. Postmodern choreographers like Brown, Monk, and Rainer utilized city architecture, redefining passive participation and blending art with life.
- The 1970s dance boom in NYC emerged amidst urban decay, transforming the city into a creative laboratory for postmodern choreographers.
- Artists like Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and Yvonne Rainer broke free from the confines of the proscenium stage, utilizing public spaces as integral components of their performances.
- These choreographers engaged with the city, using its architecture and atmosphere to expand the dimensions of dance beyond traditional settings.
- Their work challenged the separation between dancer and audience, redefining spectatorship and inviting active participation.
- The legacy of this movement endures, influencing contemporary site-specific performances and the democratization of dance in urban environments.
Table of contents
The Proscenium as Prison: Critiquing the Traditional Stage
To understand the significance of this revolution, one must examine how artists perceived the limitations of the traditional proscenium stage. These artists determined to escape this framework. The proscenium stage did not serve as a neutral container; it functioned as an ideological framework. Rejecting it became a foundational act of the postmodern project.
The “Picturebox” Aesthetic
In a 1973 analysis, critic Deborah Jowitt characterized the conventional stage as a “picturebox.” This characterization imposes critical limitations on both the dance and the audience. The rectangular frame inherently flattens movement. As a result, it makes true depth difficult to perceive while favoring a two-dimensional clarity.
The proscenium enforces a single, static point of view. This setup cleanly separates the performance from the audience. Jowitt likens this separation to a “religious rite.” In this context, attendees revere the action from a polite distance. Furthermore, within this frame, she notes that “Everyone and everything is seen from its best angle.” As a result, this creates a controlled and mannerly display. Consequently, it becomes a more predictable experience rather than an unpredictable encounter.
The Conflict with Modernism
This architectural grammar perfectly suited the aesthetics of classical and neoclassical ballet. In this art form, “balanced and orderly patterns” seem to “affirm rectangularity.” However, this same space confined other forms of dance. The stage designer Arch Lauterer famously remarked that modern dance pioneers impacted the design.
Martha Graham was “too 3-D to be seen properly from row H.” Some creators worked to subvert the proscenium from within. However, a more radical group concluded that the frame itself was the problem. Therefore, for these innovators, the future of dance lay in shattering the picture box completely. They believed in abandoning traditional venues. Instead, they sought a new and grittier laboratory: the city itself.
The Urban Canvas: New York City as a Laboratory
The spatial revolution was inextricably linked to its location. New York City, in its unique state of economic distress and cultural ferment, served as the essential catalyst.
Writer Elizabeth Kendall recalls that the New York of the era was perceived as “dismal,” grimy, and even threatening. However, for a generation of young artists, this same city acted as a “springboard.” In fact, it was a vast territory for activating their bodies and ideas. The epicenter of this creative movement was SoHo. Furthermore, Kendall describes it as a “grimy laboratory of the future.”
This migration was fueled by a powerful philosophical and political imperative that was inherited from the Judson Dance Theater of the 1960s. At that time, choreographers effectively “put dance on a shape-shifting autopsy table.” They enacted this creed by subverting the urban environment itself. This included walking on walls and signaling from rooftops. These practices were performed “in the service of bringing dance into line with counterculture politics.”
Choreographing the Cityscape
By examining the pioneering site-specific work of Trisha Brown, Meredith Monk, and Yvonne Rainer, we can see how the city’s architecture became an integral element of choreography.
Trisha Brown: Expanding Dimensions
Trisha Brown’s work represented a radical expansion of the choreographic plane, moving beyond the floor to engage the vertical and horizontal expanses of the city.
- Roof Piece: In this iconic work, Brown created a dance that unfolded across the SoHo cityscape. A sequence of movements was relayed from one dancer to another “from roof to roof” over a distance of “several blocks”. As the phrase traveled, it transformed into a “beautifully deteriorating sequence,” subject to the distortions of distance and perspective.
- Man Walking Down the Side of a Building: This piece offered a direct defiance of gravity, challenging the very laws of physics that govern our everyday lives. Specifically, a performer is secured by a harness that ensures his safety during this daring act. He calmly walks down the vertical facade of a building, with an air of nonchalance, as if he is on a horizontal sidewalk. This bold display not only captivates the audience but also blurs the lines between reality and illusion. Furthermore, this performance reorients the viewer’s perception of space and orientation in a striking manner. It does so against a backdrop of grim, industrial brick, which serves as a stark contrast to the fluidity of the movement. Additionally, the stark geometry of metal fire escapes adds to the experience, contributing to a sense of urban grit that enhances the overall impact of the performance.
Video: Trisha Brown’s Man Walking Down the Side of a Building
Meredith Monk: Inhabiting Memory
Meredith Monk’s approach involved activating large-scale spaces to create immersive, mosaic-like experiences.
- Vessel (1972): Monk chose a city parking lot as the venue for the third part of this opera-epic. The performance was a massive spectacle incorporating “armies” and roaring “motorcycles,” transforming a mundane urban space into a mythic theatrical landscape.
- Ellis Island (1981): This film work is set within the “crumbling halls of contemporary Ellis Island”. The decaying architecture becomes a silent witness, its very texture evoking the ghosts of the 12 to 16 million people who passed through its doors.
Video: Meredith Monk’s Ellis Island
Yvonne Rainer: Dance as Intervention
Yvonne Rainer’s use of public space represented the most direct fusion of dance and political protest, aligning with the imperative to “Attack all hierarchies”.
- “Trio A” on the Street: Rainer’s seminal dance became a “lingua franca for dancers meeting on SoHo street corners”. Its aesthetic—described as “sloppy-tidy, faux-plebeian”—allowed it to blend seamlessly into the everyday life of the street.
- Anti-War Protest (1970): Rainer explicitly merged artistic practice with activism by leading a “very slow march in SoHo” to protest the Vietnam War. This act positioned choreography as a method of public assembly and dissent.
Redefining the Spectator
Moving dance out of the theater was a fundamental restructuring of the audience’s role. By breaking the proscenium frame, choreographers dismantled the comfortable separation between the observer and the observed.
Critic Deborah Jowitt describes this new dynamic as one of “blurred boundaries.” In this context, the very definition of performance becomes ambiguous. For example, when a dance unfolds on a city street, one might wonder if the old man gesticulating on the sidewalk is part of the dance. Furthermore, the journey through “cramped halls or icy streets” to reach a venue can feel like a “prologue.” This experience prompts questions about one’s own situation. Ultimately, one may ask, “Is your own discomfort in the dance?”
In these spaces, the spectator is often too close to take in the whole “stage picture” at once. Instead, the experience resembles “browsing through a store,” where, therefore, the individual’s attention roves and settles on various details. This can include, for instance, a single gesture or “the run in someone’s tights.” Consequently, the audience is no longer a unified body; rather, they become individual witnesses, each constructing their own meaning from what they observe.
The Enduring Legacy
The decision by 1970s postmodern choreographers to move dance out of the proscenium theater was a deliberate, profound, and politically charged act. This shift not only represented a fundamental rethinking of what dance could be, where it could happen, and who it was for, but also challenged traditional notions of performance space and audience engagement. By opting for unconventional venues such as public parks, streets, and even abandoned buildings, these choreographers broke free from the constraints of the established theater environment. This new approach democratized dance, making it accessible to a broader audience and opening up dialogues about societal issues and individual expression through the medium of movement. In doing so, it invited spectators to become active participants in the art form, thereby transforming the very nature of performance and expanding the boundaries of dance as an artistic discipline.
By blurring the boundaries of the stage, artists like Brown, Monk, and Rainer fulfilled the political imperative to “Attack all hierarchies.” As a result, they transformed the audience from passive consumers into active participants. Moreover, as Deborah Jowitt concluded in 1973, there are “too many kinds” of dances in the world. Therefore, it is impossible to “insist on one kind of dancing-place.” Their legacy endures today. In fact, it is evident in the countless site-specific performances, all of which owe a debt to the artists who first dared to walk off the stage. Consequently, they helped to democratize dance in the city itself.
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