When and Where We Enter

Abstract This chapter highlights the artists of color moving in and through the downtown spaces of New York City during a period in which notions of the “postmodern,” “avant-garde,” “experimental,” and “conceptual” monikers were attached to the dances made and performed at the time. It argues that wherever any of the othered bodies scattered throughout this text are or were, they were impacting the art that was being made. The writing of contemporary dance history has most often missed the opportunity to consider all of the bodies in the space because they are so focused on a few, predominantly white bodies, to whom the genius and innovation of the period(s) are attributed. The chapter then proposes that the environment in which dance’s icons made their advances included other and othered humans. They were critical to the formation of the first and second waves of downtown, of black, avant-garde, abstract, or jazz aesthetics.