Analytic post-modern dance is what we now call one of the many phases of post-modern dance. The term “post-modern dance” was coined in the early 1960s by Yvonne Rainer, a choreographer in the movement, but it was not until the early 1970s that analytic pst-modern dance emerged as an independent style with its own aesthetic code. Analytic post-modern dance, as wrote the first person to study it in print (Michael Kirby in The Dance Review), was focused on the “interior view” of dance; there were no restrictions on what kinds of movements were acceptable in terms of visual appearance because movement was considered by the analytic post-modern choreographers to be a result of decisions, goals, concepts, and problems, not just aesthetically pleasing poses and transitions. As long as a movement or stance adhered to those rules and principles, regardless of whether it was pleasing to the eye, that movement was considered dance.

Analytic post-modern dance also rejected musicality, forced meaning, imposed classification and characterization, clear moods, and atmospheres. This school of dance used props, lighting, and costumes in purely functional ways: dancers performed in sweatpants, T-shirts, or casual everyday dress and danced in silence in plain, well-lit rooms. Analytic post-modern dance was, in a way, an attempt to redefine dance after the 1960s-post-moderns tore apart any and all standing definitions.

One dancer/choreographer who had a hand in shaping the movement was Tricia Brown. In the early days of post-modern dance, when the school as a whole was struggling with bringing new uses of time, space, and body to the art of dance, Tricia Brown danced on a chicken coop roof and in a parking lot, pioneering the “unconventional stage,” the new performance space. Brown also developed, with choreographers Yvonne Forti and Dick Levine, “violent contact” improvisation and later, alone, Accumulation Pieces and Structured Pieces, which explored movement devoid of expressive effects or references. The two experiments of sorts pioneered new ways of moving that became accepted types of dance, and as analytic post-modern dance took on momentum as a movement, Brown started her own company, the Tricia Brown Dance Company, and collaborated with many other by-then-established choreographers (including Rauschenberg and Judd). Tricia Brown was completely entwined in the analytic post-modern dance movement and was a pioneer of many of its most striking characteristics.