ABSTRACT
In early 2010 British choreographer Rosemary Butcher travelled to the USA in order to trace her own history and influences, in particular investigating her own experience of the Judson Church Movement in the early 1970s when living in New York. As part of this journey she accessed the archive of American artist Allan Kaprow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where she watched several of Kaprow's films. She agreed to reinvent Kaprow's first Happening entitled 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, which originally took place at the Reuben Gallery in New York City in 1959. The creative process of Butcher's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts 1959/2010 involved looking at many meticulous copies of Kaprow's handwritten scores, photographs and fragments of his published writing. The choreographer searched for connection points between Kaprow's and her own practice and found an interest in Kaprow's preoccupation with the everyday.
