Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions

Dance Education Faculty: Douglas Dunn


Douglas Dunn: began his career performing with Yvonne Rainer & Group (1968-70), Merce Cunningham & Dance Company (1969-73), and Grand Union (1970-76), a collective including Trisha Brown, David Gordon, Steve Paxton and Rainer. During this time he also devoted himself to presenting solos, collaborative duets, group works, a performance exhibit, and was involved in two film projects. In 1976 he began Lazy Madge, and ongoing choreographic project featuring ten dancers. He added material and varied the rules of presentation continuously during the 18-month work period, a performance being a 70 minute snapshot of the evolving situation. Toward the end of 1977 this group reconfigured itself into Douglas Dunn & Dancers, and began touring repertory. Lazy Madge and Dunn’s other works are written about in Sally Banes’ Terpsichore in Sneakers, Houghton Mifflin, 1979, and Wesleyan University Press, 1987.

Dunn has been commissioned to create dances for the Paris Opera Ballet (Pulcinella, 1980), the Groupe de Recherche Choreographique de l’Opera de Paris, the Grand Ballet of Bordeaux, New Dance Ensemble, Repertory Dance Theater of Salt Lake City, the Ballet Theatre Francais de Nancy, the Walker Art Center, the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, WGBH-TV, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and Portland State University, among others. He has been guest artist at major institutions across the United States and abroad. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and the Creative Arts Public Service Program and other sources.

Back to Top

Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions - 35 W. 4th Street, Suite 777 - New York, NY 10012 - (212) 998-5424