After many years of creating works that demanded highly controlled conditions in order to be made, choreographer Wally Cardona’s current process is one of softly undoing, initiating intimate collaborations where ways of doing can mutate in proximity to others. In dialogue with David Gordon since 1994, Cardona first appeared in his work as a part of The Matter at MoMA / 2018, performing the original score for the Muybridge solo and the duet Close Up. Two years later, he assisted Gordon in the making of The Philadelphia Matter – 1972/2020, a video performance by a “virtual dance company” of 30 Philadelphia performers. The following year, he was a co-producer and performer in The New Adventures of Old David (What Happened 1978–2021), a video work based on Gordon’s 1978 What Happened. Cardona is the recipient of a Bessie Award, an inaugural Doris Duke Artist Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NYFA Fellowship, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, a six-year LMCC Extended Life Residency, a Danspace Project/Robert Rauschenberg Captiva Project Residency and a Krannert Center Reflective Time Residency. As a performer, he has appeared in multiple works by Ralph Lemon and Deborah Hay and in Matthew Barney’s film, Secondary. Born in California and raised in New Mexico, Cardona lives and works in New York City. @wallycardonax

Molly Lieber received a 2016 “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performer and has performed in works by luciana achugar (since 2013), Oren Barnoy, Wally Cardona, Keely Garfield, Maria Hassabi, Heidi Henderson, Juliette Mapp, Antonio Ramos, Melinda Ring, Donna Uchizono, and others. Molly teaches at Queens College (CUNY). Her collaborative work with Eleanor Smith was documented by the New York Public Library (Body Comes Apart (2019)), and featured in the “Best of NY Dance” in The New York Times (Basketball (2017)). Molly and Eleanor received a 2023/2024 Lifeline Award (LMCC) and are the subjects of an upcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Memory.

David Gordon (1936-2022) From his beginning as a founding artist of the seminal Judson Church performances and the improvisational Grand Union, David Gordon purposefully examined, expanded, and torpedoed conventional lines between theater and dance and pioneered the use of text and textual narrative in movement work. His dual status as movement artist and theater artist was acknowledged when he was awarded a Pew Charitable Trust National Dance Residency grant and a National Theater Residency grant in successive years. He received three NEA American Masterpiece Grant Awards and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. His online archive is available online at davidgordon.nyc and his work is in the permanent collection at the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts. Commissions for directing or choreographing include: The Actors Studio, American Ballet Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, American Repertory Theater, Barbican (London), BBC Channel 4 UK, London Dance Umbrella, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Guthrie Theater, Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, PBS series Alive from Off Center, Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop, On The Boards (Seattle, WA), PBS Great Performances, Serious Fun @ Lincoln Center, Spoleto USA, Theatre For a New Audience, Walker Art Center, White Oak Dance Project.

Valda Setterfield (1934-2023) (Dancer/Actor) was from England where she began performing in pantomimes and with Ballet Rambert. In 1958 she came to the US and joined James Waring Co. (58–62) and Merce Cunningham Co. (64–74). She performed with David Gordon from 1960 to 2023, at Living Theater and Judson Dance Theater and as a founding member of Pick Up Performance Co(s), dancing alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov in Made in USA and playing Marcel Duchamp in The Mysteries & What’s So Funny?, The Old Woman alongside Gordon’s The Old Man in Ionesco’s The Chairs, the Narrator in Dancing Henry Five, and many other works. She worked with Yvonne Rainer, Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, JoAnne Akalaitis, Brian de Palma, Graziella Danielle, Woody Allen, Boris Charmatz and her son, playwright/director Ain Gordon, playing herself in his Art, Life & Show Biz among many other roles. She was the recipient of three “Bessie” awards, including one for sustained achievement, an Obie award (with David and Ain for The Family Business), a 2019 Dance Magazine Award with David and in 2017, the Herald Angel Award at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, for her performance in the title role of Lear, by Irish choreographer John Scott.

Alyce Dissette is a producer for performing, visual, film, and digital artists who has worked in a wide range of venues and projects from staff member in the Metropolitan Opera Presentations Department to former Executive Producer of the PBS national series, Alive from Off Center, and on digital media productions with the Voyager Co. She has worked with hundreds of artists including filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, François Girard, Mark Pellington, visual artist James Turrell, author Art Spiegelman, and in the performing arts, Sir Richard Alston, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Karin Coonrod, Ain Gordon, David Gordon, Philip Glass, Nona Hendryx, John Kelly, Urban Bush Women, and Robert Wilson. She has served on the Board of Directors for Dance/USA and the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York. She produced the multi-faceted archive project for choreographer/director/writer David Gordon, available online https://davidgordon.nyc. She has been the Producing Director for the Pick Up Performance Co. since 2002 and is currently Co-director of the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project.

Pick Up Performance Co. incorporated in 1978, is an artist-driven development, production, and presenting organization founded by choreographer/director/writer David Gordon. In 1992, the Pick Up Performance Co. (PUPC) expanded its artistic leadership to support the work of writer/director Ain Gordon, his son, who now helms the company. Since 1978, PUPC has produced over 100 performance works through multi-year production/development models in partnership with leading performance venues, community organizations, and universities, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Baryshnikov Arts, New York Live Arts, 651 Arts, and La MaMa ETC (all NYC); Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (IL), Arizona Arts Live, UCLA Center for the Art of Performance, William Way LGBT Community Center (PA), the Mark Taper Forum (CA), International Festival of Arts & Ideas (CT), National Performance Network, and Williams College (MA), to cite a few.

WCV, Inc., founded in 1998 by choreographer Wally Cardona, has a longstanding history of producing large multi-layered projects grounded in collaboration. These have ranged from The Set Up: Island Ghost Sleep Princess Time Story Show, a 7-part dance made over the course of six years with dance artists from NYC, France, Bali, Java, Cambodia, Myanmar, Okinawa and India; to Interventions 1-7, made from encounters with the requests and opinions of a sommelier, astrophysicist, architect, social activist, among others; to Really Real, a “people piece” for 100 individuals, including the Brooklyn Youth Chorus; to A Light Conversation, an intimate physical dialogue on aesthetics vs. ethics, love, commitment and sacrifice, made with Swiss/British choreographer Rahel Vonmoos. U.S. partners have included Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, The Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, EMPAC, The Kitchen, Baryshnikov Arts Center and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.