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On July 23, 1964, choreographer Lucinda Childs premiered Street Dance, a site-specific piece now widely recognized as a seminal work of American postmodern dance. Created as an assignment from Robert Ellis Dunn to the dancers of the Judson Dance Theater, the six-minute piece marked a pivotal moment in experimentation between dance and new media. Street Dance (1964–2025) is a reenactment of the original piece to be staged just a few blocks from the initial performance location.

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).

The project will feature Lucinda Childs herself and interdisciplinary artist David Thomson. An accompanying archival exhibition will contextualize the work and be 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).