David Gordon is a New York City-based choreographer, director, writer, and dancer known for his postmodern dance performances.
Gordon was born in New York City in 1936, and raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Brooklyn's Coney Island neighborhood. After graduating from Seward Park High School, Gordon attended Brooklyn College, where he studied art and first developed an interest in dance. Gordon joined the school's modern dance club, and subsequently landed the lead role in the college's production of Dark of the Moon.
In 1958, after graduating from Brooklyn College, Gordon began dancing with the choreographer James Waring's company. Through his work with Waring, Gordon met the dancer Valda Setterfield, who had recently moved to New York City from England. Gordon choreographed his first duet with Setterfield, Mama Goes Where Papa Goes, in 1960. The following year Gordon and Setterfield were married, and in 1962, their son Ain was born. In order to help financially support the family, Gordon took a series of jobs designing window displays for retail stores and doing photography layout for magazines.
In 1962, Gordon assisted in founding the Judson Dance Theater, which hosted performances at the Judson Church. Some of Gordon's early works included Mannequin Dance (1962), Helen's Dance (1962), Random Breakfast (1963), and Silver Pieces (Fragments) (1964). However, a poorly received 1966 solo performance of Walks and Digressions so discouraged Gordon, he did not choreograph another dance for five years.
Gordon joined Yvonne Rainer's dance company in 1966, a collaboration that led to the formation of the Grand Union dance group in 1970. In addition to Gordon and Rainer, the group comprised the dancers Trisha Brown, Barbara Dilley, Douglas Dunn, Nancy Lewis, and Steve Paxton. The group performed improvisational pieces together until 1976.
In 1971, Gordon formed the Pickup Performance Company to promote his own work. The company incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1976, and put on such performances as Sleepwalking (1971), The Matter (1972), Chair (1974), Times Four (1975), Personal Inventory (1976), Wordsworth and the Motor (1977), Not Necessarily Recognizable Objectives (1977), What Happened (1978), An Audience With the Pope (or This Is Where I Came In) (1979), and Close Up (1979).
With the increasing success of his dance career, Gordon was able to give up his window display and design work, focusing full time on the Pickup Company and taking their productions on the road. The company toured the United States with, Close Up, Dorothy and Eileen (1980), T.V. Reel (1982), Trying Times (1982), Framework (1983), My Folks (1984), Four Men Nine Lives (1985), and Transparent Means for Travelling Light (1986).
Between 1985 and 1986, Gordon produced two performances for the American Ballet Theatre, Field, Chair and Mountain (1985) and Murder (1986). The latter was adapted into the television program, David Gordon's Made in U.S.A., which was part of the Dance in America series commissioned by WNET and Great Performances in 1987, and which earned Gordon an Emmy Award.
In 1987, Gordon began work on an ambitious project called United States, in which he crafted productions unique to particular locations around the country. Gordon conducted extensive research, soliciting information about specific venues and cities, and enlisting over thirty regional co-presenters. This culminated in two years of touring that brought Gordon and his dancers to sixteen states, as well as Washington, D.C and Brazil.
In 1991, Gordon wrote, directed, and choreographed, The Mysteries and What's So Funny, a piece that featured Setterfield in the role of Marcel Duchamp, and included music by Philip Glass. The work garnered both a Bessie and an Obie award for Gordon. This was followed up with another Obie Award winning piece, The Family Business (1994), a collaboration with Gordon's son. That same year, Gordon directed and choreographed the musical, Shlemiel the First, which won Drama-Logue Awards for both direction and choreography.
Gordon was awarded the National Theatre Artist Residency Grant in 1995, and worked with the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis to direct and choreograph Max Frisch's The Firebugs. This was followed by additional collaborations with Ain Gordon on Punch & Judy Get Divorced (1996) and The First Picture Show (1999). Gordon's next three productions, Autobiography of a Liar (1999), FAMILY$DEATH@ART.COMedy (2001), and Private Lives of Dancers (2002) were all performed at Danspace in New York City. Subsequent works which Gordon directed and choreographed include Dancing Henry Five (2004), The Chairs (2004), He Who Gets Slapped (2004), Aristophanes' The Birds (2006), and The Roundheads and Pointheads (2002-2009).
In 2012, Gordon revisited some of his older works for The Matter/2012: Art and Archive, which featured versions of Mannequin, Chair, and The Matter, all of which was part of a series celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the first Judson Dance Theater performances. The following year, Gordon was awarded a Doris Duke Artist Award.
In 2016, Gordon put on a series of performances and workshops called, Live Archiveography, in conjunction with an installation at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts. The installation utilized materials from Gordon's archive to reflect on his career, and culminated in a website chronicling his life and career in his own words.