Dance On Ensemble’s invitation to Lucinda Childs to restage works from the 1960s and 1970s, along with a new commission, prompted reflection on history, aging, and their nuanced portrayals. The works were presented at Radialsystem from 24–27 July.
For ten years, the Berlin-based Dance On Ensemble has challenged ageism in contemporary dance by showcasing the experience, physical intelligence, and charismatic presence of mature dancers through ambitious collaborations. Their performances demonstrate that virtuosity deepens over time, and that the dancing body and choreography hold histories. Through restagings of two of Lucinda Childs’ early works and the premiere of a new commission, STEIN, this evening revealed how dance gathers and leaves marks across bodies, time, and choreographic form.
The program began with Untitled Trio (1968) and Radial Courses (1976), presented without pause between them, blending two historical studies in geometry and mathematical temporal structure. In the first, three dancers in white and beige trousers, shirts, and sneakers performed simple, architectural repetitions in unified rhythms, shifting directions to form constantly transforming spatial patterns across the bare stage. Their shift into Radial Courses developed this relational puzzle: a fourth dancer joined, and the sound of footfalls gained compositional presence. The dancers set a quick, even tempo, tracing a large circle across the floor. This base rhythm was ornamented with syncopating hops, leaps, and turns; the quartet elaborated their rotations with rhythmic and spatial variation. The sound of feet became both material and method—revealing how minimalist forms can hold time and accumulate the expertise of performers across decades. These works, staged by Ty Boomershine, show Childs’ vital role in shaping a minimalist choreographic language where repetition becomes transformation—a language that continues to resonate across generations.
Each member of Dance On is over forty (the age at which many dancers traditionally retire). That these works were interpreted by this ensemble made them more resonant: within the stripped-back minimalism, free from theatrical embellishment, the dancers’ individual, virtuosic presences, honed over decades, shone brightly. Their performances celebrated the maturity of both their wise bodies and the works themselves, now 49 and 57 years old.
The evening closed with STEIN, a new duet danced by Childs and Miki Orihara. Separated by a translucent screen, Childs stood upstage, diffused by Hans Peter Kuhn’s projected imagery—bodies of water slowly fading into one another—while Orihara moved in front of this milky blue light. In contrast to the rhythmic rigour of the earlier works, movement here emerged like spoken language: organic, human, unmechanic. A recording of Childs’ voice, elegant and concise, spoke Gertrude Stein’s Photograph, whose language likewise turns repetition into insistence and change. A white chair slowly sailing across the stage recalled Childs’ collaborations with Robert Wilson, where gesture and object choreographed time itself. In STEIN, this motif returned as part of a larger structure, where repetition, voice, and doubling traced a long arc of legacy: a dance of histories marked, and marking.
STEIN by Lucinda Childs, alongside two early works, was presented at Radialsystem from 24–27 July.
