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“Modern dance loves a wrong place,” writes David Velasco, “a church, a rooftop, a plaza, a street, or a gallery.”1 The “wrong” places he lists recall work from the 1960s and 1970s, especially by members of Judson Dance Theater. Since then, a lot of dancers and choreographers have moved out of the theatre temporarily or permanently and being out of place has long ceased to be wrong. Still, Velasco’s list calls for a closer look: by placing public spaces next to art institutions, he suggests that the situations and challenges they present for dance are basically all the same. This is obviously not true, and we have to consider the specificity of these various places.
Moving into public spaces involves what we could call a de-framing: leaving the theatre means foregoing the established institutional and architectural markers of dance as an art form. Of course, this does not...