ABSTRACT
David Gordon grew up in New York City and studied fine arts at Brooklyn College. Without having formally studied dance, he was drawn into performing and first danced professionally with James Waring in the late 1950s. He was one of the members of Robert Ellis Dunn’s classes in the early 1960s that led choreographers toward the pursuit of unprescribed methods and materials and resulted in the Judson Dance Theater. Gordon went on to work with Yvonne Rainer in her Continuous Project-Altered Daily, in which she and her dancers explored the interplay between choreography, rehearsal, and performance. During 1970–76 Gordon was a member of Grand Union, an improvisational performing group that spun off from Rainer’s work, in which his talent for impromptu verbal wit contributed to the group’s complexly theatrical, multileveled performances.
