User:Danzcritic

Gus Solomons, Jr.
Gus Solomons, Jr. (born 27 April 1940) is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, dance critic, and actor. He is a leading figure in postmodern and experimental dance.

Dancer
Gus Solomons, Jr., born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, began his serious dance training in modern dance and ballet while an undergraduate architecture student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) He was a member of a local dance company called Dance Makers, and it was there where he began his experimental solo choreography. A year after graduating from MIT with a Bachelor of Architecture degree, Solomons moved to New York City with a "burning itch to perform and make dances" In 1962, he worked alongside other dance experimentalists at a studio in New York City. According to Solomons, quoted in Banes, they wanted to "find new forms, ways of making dances that were different from those of our mentors" Although he was interested in deconstructing forms and structures, he was passionate about technical dancing. He performed with the companies of Pearl Lang, Donald McKayle, Joyce Trisler, Paul Sanasardo, and Martha Graham, although his most significant association during this period was with the Merce Cunningham company from 1964 to 1968

Choreographer
In 1971, Solomons founded the Gus Solomons Company/Dance, whose repertoire consisted of detailed and analytical compositions that were conceived as "melted architecture", drawing from his experience as an architecture student at MIT

Solomons Today
Now, forty years later, Solomons continues to make a living from dancing, choreographing, experimenting, and critiquing dance. Since 1980, he has devoted some of his time to dance criticism, and his reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, Ballet News, Attitude, Dance Magazine, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Gus Solomons, Jr. is currently in a trio known as Paradigm, which he founded in 1996, whose goal is to "promote and celebrate the talents of mature artists on stage" "Paradigm," Paradigm,http://www.paradigm-nyc.org/home.html (accessed March 23, 2008).