Folded poster / announcement for "Works for an Open Space," a performance by Twyla Tharp and dancers held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music February 24 and 28, [1969]. Dancers included: Sara Rudner, Theresa Dickinson, Margery Tuppling, Graciela Figueroa, Rose Marie Wright, Miriam Burns, Anne Danoff and Nancy Lewis. "Twyla Tharp and Dancers made its Brooklyn Academy of Music debut in February 1969. The two-night engagement was part of the larger Festival of Dance presented by new Executive Director Harvey Lichtenstein as part of his first season. Modern dance was gaining mainstream credibility. The Ford Foundation had recently granted modern dance its first support, including $100,000 to Lichtenstein for the festival. That February, Tharp had appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine. The BAM engagement, Works for an Open Space, included two pieces, Generation and the New York premiere of Group Activities, that experimented with formal construction. In Generation, five dancers performed simultaneous solos, and in Group Activities, two groups of dancers performed the same choreography, with a caller keeping the dancers in sync. There was no reserved seating, and the audience sat on bleachers surrounding the stage. During this period, Tharp was also experimenting with site-specific work. But, unlike her avant-garde contemporaries, she embraced ballet, both its classical vocabulary and speedy athleticism. Tharp dancers were unashamedly classically trained, and dispersed daily to ballet classes in lieu of company class. At this time, the company was all women." -- from the BAM Archives.