sorry to get to this stream so late but I've been away for two weeks 
and am only catching up with my post;
I have enjoyed the discussion on the Judson church, Yvonne Rainer, 
Steve Paxton work -- I found the book  _Terpsichore in Sneakers_ 
(sorry the author eludes me just now) a good introduction to a lot of 
this work; also Susan Leigh Foster's work on dance, _Reading Dance_ 
and Foster has just recently edited a collection of essays on 
contemporary dance which seem interesting (from one of the US 
university presses, Berkeley I think)

regarding the DV8 show, which I saw at Sheffield, and where I also 
was ' warned ' about the performance before I went in ( I thought on 
reflection that that front of house staff had been coached in how to  
' warn ' thje audience, i.e. I think now it was like the scene about 
the photography at the end, about playing with the audience 
expectations); I know that the taking of photographs during the 
performance annoyed me and was all on Sally Houston's side when she 
bagan to speak at the end, so then when I realised that we had been 
set up I felt a bit of a twit;
as regards the rest of the piece -- while I could see the intentions, 
issues of body perfection, what sort of bodies we want to see, what 
bodies we are let see, I found the work very uneven; the older dancer 
was excellent, her movements were a combination of trained perfection 
and pained display; I also felt that Sally Houston was very good, and 
the dancer who played her 'shadow', her fears, the interaction 
between them was great;
the interesting thing is that the words, the verbal element has left 
hardly any impression on me;  I feel in some way I must have subsumed 
them into the movement, in that I felt I was putting the words to 
what I saw, and when they didn't fit I moved on;

Mark Leahy
[log in to unmask]
School of English 
University of Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom


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