“The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance: 1970-1976”
Wesleyan, 2020
by Wendy Perron
by Gay Morris
copyright 2021 by Gay Morris
The Grand Union existed for a mere six years, from 1970 to 1976. Yet its performances were legendary, in good part because a number of its members were among the brightest lights of postmodern dance. Would we still be interested in the Grand Union if it had not included Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Tricia Brown, Doug Dunn, and Barbara Dilly? I suspect not.
Important, too, is the mystery that has surrounded the SoHo based group. Their concerts were often described as “magic,” both by participants and viewers. And like all magic, it is hard to analyze. The group was a leaderless collective and the performances improvisatory. Critics struggled to convey the impact of what they had seen, since it didn’t conform to any usual form of theater dance. Descriptions made the activity sound mundane and yet tangled and complex. Some critics simply dismissed the group as self-indulgent or a cult of personality. The concerts were also little documented visually, and what was documented has not been readily accessible. It was when she discovered some dozen videos of Grand Union performances that Wendy Perron decided to try to come to grips in a major way with the group. The result is “The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance: 1970-1976” (Wesleyan, 2020).
Perron has sound credentials for the task she took on. She joined Trisha Brown’s company in 1976, just as Brown was leaving the Grand Union to devote herself to her own choreography. Perron also saw Grand Union performances and so had first-hand knowledge of what an evening with the group looked and felt like. The videos, although primitive and taken from a single position, also allowed her to relate, with a degree of accuracy, what went on moment to moment in particular performances.
The structure of Perron’s book intersperses chronological chapters with what she calls “interludes.” The latter consist of musings of her own, as well as extended quotes from published articles, and interviews with individuals who encountered the Grand Union in a variety of ways.
The chapters begin with an examination of some of the artists, teachers and mentors who influenced the Grand Union dancers. These included, most prominently, Anna Halprin, John Cage, and Robert Dunn. Some of the Grand Union members studied with Halprin, others belonged to the Merce Cunningham company, with its Cage connections. Most had taken Dunn’s composition classes, which were a catalyst for much postmodern experimentation. The Judson Dance Theater was also a major progenitor, with Rainer, Brown, Paxton and Gordon, all having been part of it. Perron calls the Grand Union a bridge between Judson and the independent careers of its members.
Once Perron deals with those who influenced the Grand Union, she devotes a chapter to the members and what each brought to the group. The Grand Union’s core artists shifted somewhat over the course of its existence. In addition to those mentioned above, the other consistent member was Nancy Lewis. Lincoln Scott and Becky Arnold briefly joined early on, then left. Rainer left, by 1973, to make films. Occasionally guests were included in performances, although this was generally not successful. As David Gordon said, the Grand Union was ultimately a closed shop.
The central section of Perron’s book consists of a performance history of the group, including a detailed examination of parts of the videos, along with a number of interludes. She ends with the Grand Union break-up, and the members’ careers afterward.
As Perron relates it, the Grand Union grew out of Rainer’s “Continuous Project-Altered Daily,” (1969) in which Dilley, Arnold, Dunn, Gordon and Paxton danced as part of Rainer’s company. At that point Rainer was running things, but she slowly, and reluctantly, withdrew control. With a new name, the Grand Union was born as a leaderless collective that did not rehearse, and whose members turned up (or not, as the case may be) to dance together for several hours before audiences. These performances had no set beginning, middle or end, no plan, no goal. Everything evolved during the course of the evening with the addition of a few props and recorded music (the dancers often shopped for records that were most remarkable for being cheap). Costumes were whatever each individual chose to wear, which was mostly comfortable street clothes. In one of the few bows to modern dance, the members often danced barefoot, but not always. There is a photo in Perron’s book of Dilly wearing lace-up granny boots, and one of Gordon in thigh high boots that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Sneakers were also in evidence. Movement came from everyday life rather than structured dance vocabularies. During a performance one dancer might engage with a prop (a ladder, a toy gun), or start some kind of movement that others joined, while someone else worked solo, or watched from the side, or lay on the floor, or sat with a blanket over their head.
The Grand Union didn’t limit itself to movement. Speech was a big part of its performances, and it allowed situations to emerge, such as a conversation between doctor and patient, an audition, an argument. These situations could appear at different performances in different guises and involve different members, or not appear at all. So although the dancers performed as themselves, they weren’t necessarily revealing aspects of their lives. It was more about being in the moment, and making decisions in that moment. What seems to have been at the core of the Grand Union was continual flux replete with contradictions, and diverse events taking place simultaneously. Like any improvisational group, the Grand Union had off nights, or parts of performances that did not jell. Audiences needed to have patience, but the Grand Union audiences expected it, accepted it, and returned often. They were mostly friends and SoHo artistic neighbors who were familiar with the dancers. Perron compares the Grand Union to a rock band, which had fans, who were likely to have favorites among the performers.
As casual as all this sounds, my guess is that if you, I, and a few neighbors got together and improvised a show from everyday activities, it wouldn’t look anything like a Grand Union performance. The members were all highly skilled professionals; more than that, they were among the most compelling dancers and inventive choreographers of their generation. Although some members had had no experience with improvisation and took a while to be comfortable with it, or didn’t and left, they had a feeling for performing in public and experience doing it. They knew how to capture viewers’ attention and hold it. Each had a personal kind of charisma that singled them out as individuals, but at the same time they were committed to working together.
This is not to say there were no struggles, disagreements, hostility and anger among the participants. Perron makes that clear, as do the former members themselves in interviews. While there was generosity and harmony in performance, that wasn’t always the case, and relations among members could be rancorous off stage. The wonder is that the group held together as long as it did.
Perron is at her best when giving detailed information on how the Grand Union developed, where it performed, and what happened along the way. She also clarifies how the collective functioned, whether it was in sharing administrative duties or sharing the performance space. Perron also touches on the SoHo scene, with artists, musicians and dancers in contact with each other as they inhabited lofts, bars and restaurants in the area.
No book can do everything, though, and Perron centers her attention on the internal workings of the group. I missed a closer examination of how the Grand Union fit into the larger social context of the 1970s. From today’s standpoint, the Grand Union seems to have been remarkably hermetic and focused on itself. If it was concerned with narrowing the gap between art and life, as the argument goes, where was the outside world? As the Vietnam War and student protests raged and Watergate developed, could the Grand Union have been a refuge from life rather than a part of it? Or did the Grand Union offer a vision of freedom and cooperation, a way forward, in the face of violent and confusing times?
Perron’s most extensive social and political comments concern race. She recognizes how white the downtown dance scene was. There were many black musicians in the area, but almost no dancers. Lincoln Scott, the one black member of the Grand Union, appears to have been a troubled young man, who soon returned to Berkeley and eventually disappeared. Perron was unable to trace him, and he remains mostly an unknown presence in her book. She briefly discusses the Clark Center, a mid-town venue that was far more diverse than SoHo. According to Perron, the downtown dancers considered the Clark artists too close to traditional modern dance, making themes of oppression overt, while the Clark dancers found their SoHo colleagues too formalist and disengaged. Perron doesn’t attempt to explore the implications of those different attitudes.
With her emphasis on the inner workings of the Grand Union, she is much more attentive to details of the group’s performances, as she saw them in the videos. While her descriptions are of value, they don’t convey much sense of the magic that was said to have been so much a part of Grand Union performances. The activity she documents sounds pedestrian in the extreme, coming most to life when members engaged in speech, which raises questions about genres and what can survive best on the written page. Perhaps, after all, you just had to have been there. The magic was conjured by a few exceptional artists in an atmosphere of intimacy and excitement that would exist for a moment and vanish. Perron quotes critic Marcia Siegel: “Nor can we hope for another chance to see the work; this isthe experience, and this is the only time we’ll get for taking it in” (ATVP 251). There may be no language, short of poetry, that can adequately translate such intense, but ephemeral experiences, into a written record.