ABSTRACT
By featuring postmodern dance practices alongside avant-garde theater and minimalist music, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and their collaborators were able to represent the three major segments of New York’s downtown performing arts scene in a single work, as well as make the case for Einstein on the Beach as an operatic Gesamtkunstwerk. This essay examines both the textual and contextual significance of dance to the opera from 1976–2014, including its structural role within the work; its choreographic evolution across the four Wilson/Glass productions, with particular attention to the aesthetic and authorial impact of replacing Andrew de Groat’s 1976 choreography with that of Lucinda Childs for the 1984, 1992, and 2012 productions; and the continuing importance of dance in productions of Einstein overseen by new directors.
