The piece originally opened at Judith Dunn’s studio on East Broadway and later, at Robert Rauschenberg’s request, from his studio at 812 Broadway in Manhattan. Childs played an audio recording instructing the audience to look out the window, while she descended to the street below to meet James Lee Byars. On the sidewalk across the street, performers gestured toward architectural details, street furniture, and shop windows. These movements were precisely synchronized with the audio playing in the loft above. The choreographer explains that “the result was that the spectator was called upon to envision, in an imagined sort of way, information that in fact existed beyond the range of actual perception”, creating “a perceptual bond.” Unaware of the performance, passersby continued with their routines, allowing the choreography to seamlessly merge with the city’s everyday gestural landscape.
Street Dance significantly influenced members of the Judson. Steve Paxton cited the work in developing his exploration of pedestrian movement in Satisfyin Lover (1967) and State (1968). Yvonne Rainer used recorded sound to synchronized action in Parts of Some Sextets (1965). For Childs, the piece marked a milestone in the development of her approach to scoring and questioning the relationship between sound, image, and live performance, which would become central to her proscenium works such as Dance (1979).
This reperformance featured Childs herself and David Thomson. An accompanying archival exhibition contextualized the work, and was on display at the performance site. The film documentation created during the performance will join the touring exhibition Lucinda Childs — Between Prediction and Speculation (2026).
Curated by Lou Forster and produced by The Blanket, the project is co-produced and co-commissioned by The Kitchen, Frac Bretagne, Frac Franche-Comté, and the Centre d’art Le Lait, with the support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Villa Albertine. A film of the performance will be included in the upcoming touring exhibition Lucinda Childs — Between Prediction and Speculation.
I recorded, mixed and mastered the audio for this performance with Lucinda Childs, and worked as the A1 sound engineer for the performances.