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Lucinda Childs Dance legend is going nowhere - until an opera about a famous physicist turned to success. Since job performance, Judith MacKrell his tracks

Lucinda Childs: five dance clips

is on the verge of a heatwave, but Lucinda Childs, sitting across from me in his office downtown is looking good and alert. Now at age 71, Childs is less elegant than it was as a young dancer. Anyone observing the behavior of his head, weld lines and disciplined in your body would understand why, 35 years ago, was invited by the director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to head the cast of the opera minimalist pioneer, Einstein on the beach.

It was a free show interval that lasted five hours, with every gesture and speech rhythm precise in due course. Not a project for the mentality of wool or pusillanimous. Polite and measured, Childs chooses his words carefully, but even she admits the work "was a marathon." The transaction could take short breaks or water, no bathroom, but the most difficult task was learning to be unconscious of the audience, who were free to enter and exit. "In the beginning," says Childs, "I used to feel so abandoned. You are well aware of brewing and riots, discussions about whether it's time to go smoke a cigarette. But later I liked to let the audience they wanted to do. "

When this extraordinary production, which has no discernable plot or characters, a well-delayed release of the UK next spring Barbican, Childs will not be on stage. But it remains indelibly associated with him, not least because pictures of his mind, the most demanding performance, light is a documentary recorded in 1984, about revival of the play. The use of a simple white dress or suit that denotes Einstein (white shirt and red suspenders), Childs says it seems illogical, even hallucinatory lines with a quiet authority, noting carefully.

his own choreography, as finely calibrated, is also present in two fragments of pure dance from the opera. Child says he is delighted with the increased public interest in the 1970s that experimentalism: next month, there is also a revival of childhood dance 1979, headlining the festival Dance Umbrella London. "It's amazing that people look at those years and see new things in them. I think there is an interest in the past has much to do with YouTube. People are fascinated by what they see in these early years. "

In 1976, Einstein on the Beach has changed the perception of the world of opera. Although inspired by the great physicist's life, work followed no way biographical. The public was left to make their own interpretations of why Einstein emerged as a violinist and dancer ecstasy, as the action moved from one station and a spaceship. The script was written for singing and solfege syllables, interspersed with monologues from the stream of consciousness platitudes had the aura of sacred ritual

In France, where Einstein was released, only a critic does not recognize the work with praise, calling its repetitive structure and slow "the perfect remedy for insomnia." In New York, part of the public slammed the door, but the rest gave him a standing ovation. At the time of the Renaissance World Tour 1984 and 1992, the opera became a legend. In Tokyo, Childs recalled, "You could hear a pin drop, no one moved the whole show. In Melbourne, just ate it all."

as the creators of Einstein, Childs said, "determined that each of us internationally." For her, it was a professional event changing. Enfant was no stranger to radical experimentation, having started with Judson, the New York arts group founded in 1962 and influenced by the Giants after leading, Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. We acted in lofts, clubs, galleries and workshops in the works which were more like installations choreography. In one of the early work of Childs, carnation, she danced in rolls of hair with a colander on his head dance, street, she and her partner danced on the sidewalk, while the audience sitting in a loft, listening to a recorded commentary on the architecture and time.

But Judson was dissolved in 1970, its membership in the drift hippie improvisation. A beautiful dancer herself, Childs was more interested in reviewing the pure movement, to work with a full-time business. But it was difficult for a relatively unknown choreographer in the strike on their own. Then came Einstein.