Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970)

Overview

A natural activity under the stress of an unnatural setting. Gravity reneged. Vast scale. Clear order. You start at the top, walk straight down, stop at the bottom. All those soupy questions that arise in the process of selecting abstract movement according to the modern dance tradition -- what, when, where, and how -- are all solved in collaboration between choreographer and place. If you eliminate all those eccentric possibilities that the choreographic imagination can conjure and just have a person walk down an aisle, then you see the movement as the activity. The paradox of one action working against another is very interesting to me, and is illustrated by Man Walking Down the Side of a Building, where you have gravity working one way on the body and my intention to have a naturally walking person working in the other way.