ABSTRACT
Lucinda Childs grew up in New York City, where she took classes in both dance and acting. Her experience studying with Helen Tamiris at the Perry-Mansfield summer school and a later master class with Merce Cunningham turned her finally toward dance. Childs majored in dance at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied with the renowned composition teacher Bessie Schönberg and with Cunningham dancer Judith Dunn. She knew even then that the work of Merce Cunningham and the Judson Dance Theater particularly interested her. Immediately after graduating in 1962 she became active with the Judson group as a choreographer and performer. Her work with them was mostly solos based on an uninflected, gestural use of ordinary objects, sometimes including spoken monologues. She took a five-year break from dance starting in 1968.
