In Performance: Judson Dance Theater in Context 1963-1965 A Slide Lecture by Barbara Moore

Judson Dance Theater is renowned as the seedbed of post-modern dance. The performances and activity that transpired, however, encompassed a wide variety of creative personalities and styles. Non-dancers such as visual artists and musicians were an influential, integrated contingent and active collaborators with trained dancers and each other. Audiences in the close-knit art scene, much smaller and geographically cohesive than it is today, also represented a diverse cross-section of New York’s creative communities.

This slide lecture, composed of historic photographs by Peter Moore, mines his remarkable archive for evidence of this inter-connectedness both within Judson Dance Theater itself and in relation to various artistic practices outside of the group proper.

Barbara Moore is an art historian, writer, and manager/curator of the Peter Moore archive. From the beginning she collaborated on organizing the archive’s performance component – now celebrating its 50th Anniversary parallel to that of JDT – and created its extensive accompanying research files. She is currently writing a book titled Observing the Avant-Garde: Peter Moore and the Photography of Performance.