Cho­reo­graph­er Ruth Childs reprises four per­form­ances cre­ated by her aunt Lucinda Childs in the 1970s, a key moment in the career of a major fig­ure of con­tem­por­ary dance and in the his­tory of dance itself. 

Fol­low­ing her ongo­ing trans­mis­sion pro­ject she star­ted in 2015 with the reprise of three 1960’s soli by Lucinda Childs, cho­reo­graph­er Ruth Childs now turns to an essen­tial peri­od in her aunt’s career – the 1970’s, the era pre­ced­ing Dance, her 1979 mas­ter­piece danced to the incred­ible music by Philip Glass. The six­teen pieces she cho­reo­graphed at that time are all danced in silence, to the sound of the per­formers’ steps; Lucinda Childs explores fur­ther her cho­reo­graph­ic pro­ject focus­ing on simple ges­tures, like walk­ing or hop­ping. These pieces often have one or two basic sequences which are gradu­ally com­plexi­fied – in vari­ations and repe­ti­tions which give the dance its pro­foundly mov­ing hyp­not­ic qual­ity. Ruth Childs also kept one of the ori­gin­al fun­da­ment­als, the 40x40ft square where the per­form­ance unfolds; she chose a quatuor (Calico Ming­ling, 1973), a trio (Reclin­ing Rondo ‚1975), and two soli (Par­tic­u­lar Reel, 1973, and Katema, 1978) to cel­eb­rate the inventiv­ity of these con­struc­tions based on lin­ear and cir­cu­lar tra­ject­or­ies. More than a simple homage to her aunt, this pro­gram is the bril­liant demon­stra­tion of the influ­ence that the rad­ic­al­ity and sim­pli­city of her pieces have had on dance history.