Valda Setterfield, 88; postmodern dance world star had singular theatrical presence
Valda Setterfield, a leading figure in the New York dance world for 60 years and the wife and muse of renowned choreographer David Gordon, died April 9 in Manhattan. She was 88.
Alyce Dissette, producing director of the Pick Up Performance Company, which Gordon founded in 1971, said Ms. Setterfield died in her sleep in a hospital, which she had entered a week earlier with pneumonia.
In a career that took her from Russian ballerina and teacher Tamara Karsavina to Woody Allen, from Jasper Johns to Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ms. Setterfield was often Gordon’s onstage partner, an association that began before their marriage in 1961 and lasted until their 2018 season at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was also closely associated with Merce Cunningham, as a dancer in his company, a teacher of his technique, and his trusted friend.
Ms. Setterfield had a singularly theatrical presence onstage, and often offstage as well, dressing imaginatively in clothes she had assembled from thrift shops. That theatricality was heightened by her impeccable diction and her low, melodious speaking voice. She and Gordon were once called “the Barrymores of postmodern dance.”
Valda Setterfield was born Sept. 17, 1934, in Margate, England, in the county of Kent, and grew up in the Kent town of Birchington-on-Sea. She was the only child of Eileen (Walker) Setterfield, a homemaker, and Thomas Valentine Setterfield, who went from venture to venture professionally.
Her passion for dance, which she discovered when she was about 4, took her to London, where she studied with Karsavina and Marie Rambert. She watched the foremost dancers of the day at Covent Garden and other theaters.
When Ms. Setterfield was in her early 20s, she met critic and performer David Vaughan, an Englishman with an eclectic taste in dance forms who had moved to New York in 1950. He became a lifelong friend. “You know,” she later recalled him telling her, “they have very interesting ideas in New York that we don’t have.”
Following his suggestion, Ms. Setterfield tried New York, arriving with a scholarship from choreographer José Limón. Soon, she was studying with Cunningham and James Waring. It was in these circles that she met Gordon, an intellectually curious young New Yorker who was already performing for Waring.
Cunningham was not yet a celebrity. Still, just watching him teach class, Ms. Setterfield told The Guardian in 2019, she thought, “This is why I came to America!” His class, she said, “had an anatomical sense to it — it went into an amazing range of shapes and steps, as well as the most thrilling rhythmic combinations.” Cunningham, she recalled, said to her, “Don’t make everything so pretty,” an observation she found revelatory.
In the early 1960s, Ms. Setterfield and Gordon found themselves well aligned for the dance experimentalism that took off at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. Dancers and choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown were among their most valued colleagues. In due course, Gordon and Ms. Setterfield moved into a loft in the same Lower Broadway building as Brown.
Cunningham engaged Ms. Setterfield briefly in 1961, the year she married Gordon. On Aug. 5 of that year, she was one of nine highly individual dancers cast in the world premiere of Cunningham’s “Aeon,” with a score by John Cage and designs by Robert Rauschenberg, neither yet the artistic celebrity he would become.
Ms. Setterfield left the Cunningham troupe when she and Gordon had a son, Ain, in 1962, but was brought back in 1965 and stayed until 1975, creating roles in 13 Cunningham works.
Gordon established the Pick Up Performance Company to make new dances in 1971. Three years later, he created “Chair” for Ms. Setterfield and himself, which introduced a long series of works in which she was his partner, his muse, or his protagonist.
Ms. Setterfield collaborated a number of times with her son, notably in the off-Broadway play “The Family Business” (1995), which also included her husband, and for which all three won an Obie Award.
Gordon died in January 2022, the morning after he and Ms. Setterfield celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary. She is survived by their son; his husband, dancer and choreographer Wally Cardona (who performed with her at MoMA in “The Matter” revival); and two granddaughters.