Dana Reitz began her career as a choreographer in 1973, following her dance experiences with Twyla Tharp's company and Laura Dean's company. She also studied the techniques of Merce Cunningham and the Chinese discipline Tai-Chi-Chuan. In 1976, she participated in Robert Wilson and Philip Glass's "Einstein on the Beach." In 1978, she danced with Andrew de Groat and Elaine Summer.
From 1977 onward, Dana Reitz developed her distinctive choreographic style. This was the year she created the solo "Journey: Moves 1 Through 7," which evolved through movement phrases along a single trajectory. The following year, she composed "Journey for Two Sides: A Solo Dance Duet," using video images transmitted by two monitors to choreographically transcribe a dialogue between what she describes as the "logical" and "intuitive" aspects of the self. Also in 1978, she created "Phrase Collection," a series of nine choreographic phrases, each assigned a different spatial situation.
Her exploration of abstract movement continued with meticulous progressions of gestures performed on repetitive canons that accumulate and transform. Works such as "Steps 1979," "4 Score for Trio 1980," "Single Score," and "Working Solo 1980" exemplify this approach. In her works from the 1980s, particularly in her famous solos exploring silence, Reitz increasingly defined her performer persona. She was known as an intellectual dancer, reminiscent of Robert Wilson's style, capable of hypnotic and rarefied movement.
Reitz developed an exquisitely original improvisational technique, always working within a basic choreographic structure but allowing herself a limited range of freedom. Continuously, without abrupt breaks, with a strong (mystical) sense of the "transcendence" of the body, Reitz breathed movement and dance into an internalized gesture that seemed to align the notion of choreographic creation with her personal concept of "stream of consciousness."
Her dance technique draws heavily from Tai-Chi-Chuan: extreme concentration, awareness of the body's center as the driving force behind all movements, spatial immersion, profound isolation, and self-analysis conducted through a sublimation of energies and dynamic lines that culminate in silence.
