The New Adventures of Old David
Date(s) of Performance
Captured at the Kasser Theater 02/2021
Company
David Gordon - Pick Up Performance
Directed by
David Gordon
Created by
David Gordon
Performers/Artists
Dancers: Wally Cardona, Scott Cunningham, Leslie Cuyjet, Karen Graham, Iréne Hultman, Justin Jain, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Dean Moss, Cynthia Oliver, Valda Setterfield
Summary
David Gordon’s six-decade career has been a journey of constant self-reimagining in which new productions frequently incorporate fragments of his past works and his personal life often becomes explicit source material. In The New Adventures of Old David (What Happened – 1978/2021), Gordon builds upon not only a previous performance, but also his experience making work expressly for the screen—as in the three-time Emmy-nominated David Gordon’s Made in U.S.A. (1987), starring his partner, Valda Setterfield, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The New Adventures of Old David is a film written, directed, and choreographed by Gordon, in which he returns to his 1978 dance-with-words What Happened to create something whose content and form are new. A company of recent and longtime collaborators— Wally Cardona, Scott Cunningham, Leslie Cuyjet, Karen Graham, Iréne Hultman, Justin Jain, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Dean Moss, Cynthia Oliver, and Setterfield—perform movement from the original work, in their homes and on the stage of the Alexander Kasser Theater, while Gordon, Setterfield, and Gordon’s stage manager of 30+ years, Ed Fitzgerald, tell the story of how What Happened happened. The result is a revealing memoir, a loving tribute to Setterfield, and evidence of Gordon’s ever-expanding artistry.
Disciplines
Theatre and Performance Studies
Link to Full Performance Video
New Adventures... Performance Video
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Additional Information
David Gordon’s complete works to date are in the permanent collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and all can be accessed at his archive website davidgordon.nyc.