Towards an Embodied Abstraction: An Historical Perspective on Lucinda Childs’ Calico Mingling (1973)

Lou Forster

doi:10.3390/arts10010007

Abstract

In the 1970s, choreographer Lucinda Childs developed a reductive form of abstraction based on graphic representations of her dance material, walking, and a specific approach towards its embodiment. If her work has been described through the prism of minimalism, this case study on Calico Mingling (1973) proposes a different perspective. Based on newly available archival documents in Lucinda Childs’s papers, it traces how track drawing, the planimetric representation of path across the floor, intersected with minimalist aesthetics. On the other hand, it elucidates Childs’s distinctive use of literacy in order to embody abstraction. In this respect, the choreographer’s approach to both dance company and dance technique converge at different influences, in particular modernism and minimalism, two parallel histories which have been typically separated or opposed.

Highlights

On the 7 December 1973, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, four women performed Calico Mingling, the latest group piece by Lucinda Childs
Calico Mingling was one of the first works that Childs choreographed for her own dance company
The company itself emerges as a tool of exploration, in the embodiment of choreography by her dancers and in the type of movement perception that this alternative space induces for the public

Summary

Introduction

On the 7 December 1973, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, four women performed Calico Mingling, the latest group piece by Lucinda Childs. Like Trisha Brown, Judith Dunn, or David Gordon, Lucinda Childs chose the company to organize her collaborative work with performers. This new framework introduced a split from her previous practice of dance—she choreographed mostly solos—as well as from members of the same generation creativecommons.org/licenses/by/. This article proposes a different perspective than what those previous efforts have yielded It examines the intersection of track drawing, the planimetric representation of path across the floor, with minimalist aesthetics. This article elucidates Childs’ distinctive use of literacy to embody abstraction in the framework of her company Her approach resonates with that of Hanya Holm, the modern dance “pioneer” with whom the choreographer studied from 1955 to 1959. Childs’ early minimalism sits at the crux of different tendencies of abstraction, which escape both the national frame of American minimalism, and the common split between modern and post-modern dance, where it has been usually confined

A 40 Square Foot Dance

The Lucinda Childs Dance Company archives

From Floor Plan to Path

Tecknik and Techniques