ABSTRACT

Many theatre, dance and performance creators from the 1960s and 1970s onwards used repetition as a significant structural and aesthetic device; and many of these, such as Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs and Steve Paxton – all of whom in the early part of their careers were closely connected with Judson Dance Theater and that loose collection of artists, musicians, dancers and poets in New York, the New York School – can easily be described as having minimalist tendencies themselves. At the same time, Meredith Monk (b. 1942), who was also connected with the Judson Dance Theater, was developing her unique multidisciplinary work as a vocalist, composer, choreographer and film-maker using repetition firmly within the minimalist aesthetic; and several other American dancer/choreographers such as Laura Dean and Molissa Fenley used, or were directly influenced by, minimalist music. By the late 1980s, this aesthetic, and the use of minimalist music, was widespread in contemporary dance and some mainstream ballet.