Reinventing Dance in the 1960s

Everything Was Possible

Edited by Sally Banes

Foreword by Mikhail Baryshnikov

Narrated by Margaret Durante

Available from Audible

Book published by The University of Wisconsin Press

The 1960s was a pivotal decade in dance, an era of intense experimentation and rich invention. In this volume an impressive range of dance critics and scholars examine the pioneering choreographers and companies of the era, such as Anna Halprin's West Coast experiments, the innovative Judson Dance Theater, avant-garde dance subcultures in New York, the work of Meredith Monk and Kenneth King, and parallel movements in Britain. The contributors include Janice Ross, Leslie Satin, Noël Carroll, Gus Solomons jr., Deborah Jowitt, Stephanie Jordan, Joan Acocella, and Sally Banes.

Sally Banes is the Marian Hannah Winter Professor of Theater History and Dance Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her many books include Terpsichore in Sneakers, Dancing Women, Democracy's Body, and Greenwich Village 1963.

REVIEWS:

“This thoughtful collection of essays edited by Sally Banes, the preeminent historian of U.S. dance at mid-century, looks back at that tumultuous decade from a multiplicity of new perspectives.”

—Lynn Garafola, Barnard College

“With the wave of interest Baryshnikov has cultivated in the 1960s, this seems exactly the right time to look again at the aesthetics and accomplishments of this era. And if I could choose any guide for this journey, it would be Sally Banes. She has claimed this fertile territory as her own, illuminating the dances of this era while meticulously grounding her discussion in American culture and the social turmoil of the 1960s.”

—David Gere, University of California, Los Angeles