THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH AND POSTMODERN DANCE

THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE JUDSON

MEMORIAL CHURCH AND POSTMODERN DANCE

By Heinrick Jason Snyder

Project Advisor: Dr. Tom Mikotowicz

A Lay Abstract of the Project Presented

 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

(in Liberal Studies)

May, 2010

            The Judson Memorial Church (JMC) is one of the United States’ first institutional churches. Its location is on Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village in New York City. It sponsored Judson Dance Theater (JDT) in the 1960s as part of its Arts Program that included the Judson Poets’ Theater, an art gallery, and music concerts. JDT is regarded as the organization that engendered postmodern dance, at least in the U.S.A. JDT also affected the liturgy and sanctuary of JMC.

Guided by a theology of art championed by Paul Tillich and Marvin Halverson, Rev. Howard Moody used secular art, theater, and dance as a catalyst for change. Through an alliance with the Village Voice, its Arts Program was part of a long term media campaign to liberate JMC from the financial control of the Baptist City Society, a regional American Baptist Convention organization centered in Westchester County, N.Y., one of America’s wealthiest counties. The arts also revitalized their church services from the Church of Scotland Liturgy and Ritual toward a modern, progressive, creative style.  All its theatrical activity inspired JMC to replace the pews in the sanctuary with folding chairs in order to create an easily convertible worship space. Also, their refusal to censor art built a strong alliance with the political reform movement in the Village.

Inspired by the teaching of John Cage, James Waring, and Robert Dunn of European avant-garde and Zen artistic philosophies, JDT choreographers (Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Deborah Hay, and a host of others) created a significant body of work that rebelled against choreographic conventions of ballet and modern dance. They founded a critical standard for postmodern dance. They did this by translating many of the ideas that informed the New York School of art in the 1950s onto the dance stage. Through improvisation, chance processes, collaboration across art forms, and subversions of the theatrical, musical, and dance conventions, they expanded the definition of theatrical dance.