Trying to see the past through contemporary eyes is one of the great challenges of dance. It’s particularly difficult with the works of the great American pioneers of the postmodern period, the group who gathered at Judson church in New York and transformed everyday movement into abstract art: Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown.
Watching films of their endeavours from the 1960s onwards, their radicalism is clear, but today it’s sometimes hard to discern the gleam of inspiration, the absolute conviction that made them so influential. Now the enterprising Van Cleef & Arpels festival Dance Reflections, which is filling London with a huge variety of dance until 8 April, offers a chance to do just that.
