David Gordon (choreographer) - 1980s

1980s

In 1980, Gordon gave up his job creating window displays, which for 18 years had supported both his work and his family – his son Ain was born in 1962 – to work full-time as a performer and choreographer. He also appeared in two seminal documentaries about postmodern dance, Beyond the Mainstream: The Postmoderns, part of the PBS Dance in America series, and Michael Blackwood's Making Dances, which focused on seven choreographers: Brown, Lucinda Childs, Gordon, Douglas Dunn, Kenneth King, Meredith Monk and Sara Rudner.

In the 1980s, his Pick-Up Company toured throughout the United States, performing both intimate pieces such as:

• Close Up (1979) – a duet for Gordon and Setterfield – and
• Dorothy and Eileen (1980), in which two female dancers improvise dialogue about their mothers – which has been called "ne of his most successfully conceived and rendered pieces";

as well as larger-scale works, including:

• T.V. Reel (1982),
• Trying Times (1982) – which ends with Gordon being put on trial by his dancers,
• Framework (1983),
• My Folks (1984) – set to klezmer music,
• Four Men Nine Lives (1985),
• Transparent Means for Travelling Light (1986) – performed to a score by John Cage,

and the mammoth United States (1988–1989), which was co-commissioned by 26 presenters in 16 states and has so many sections which exist in different but related versions that they have never all been performed together. Many of Gordon's pieces from this period had their premiere at David White's Dance Theater Workshop.

Gordon also made work for other companies during this time, including:

• Grote Ogen ("Big Eyes") for Wekcentrum Dans in the Netherlands (1981),
• Pas et Par for Theatre du Silence in Lyons (1981),
• Counter Revolution (1981), Field Study (1984) and Bach and Offenbach (1986) for London's Extemporary Dance Theatre,
• Piano Movers to music by Thelonious Monk for Dance Theatre of Harlem (1984),
• Beethoven and Booth (1985) for Group Recherche Choreographique de l'Opera de Paris, and
• Mates for Rambert Dance Company (1988).

He also made Field, Chair and Mountain (1985) and Murder (1986) for American Ballet Theatre (ABT) under Mikhail Barishnikov. Murder later became part of David Gordon's Made in USA, a television program commissioned by WNET and Great Performances in 1987, or which Gordon received a Primetime Emmy Award.

For the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 1983, Gordon choreographed Act III, the dance section, of The Photographer, a multi-media piece about Eadweard Muybridge with music by Philip Glass, in which he incorporated Setterfield's earlier solo One Part of the Matter. Also, he directed Renard, a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky, for the Spoleto Festival USA in 1986.