Sidewalk in front of Reese Palley Gallery, 550 Sutter Street, between Powell and Mason, now 556 Sutter, and 8 further locations in San Francisco

Linda Montano, Chicken Dance (12 noon, 3pm and 6pm , 3rd, 6th and 9th March 1973)

Description

I performed a chicken dance in nine different outdoor places in San Francisco. The sites were museums, galleries, and the Golden Gate Bridge. The dances were on the third month at noon, three and six o’clock. I wore a blue prom dress, tap shoes, chicken hat and white face. I pulled a chicken cart which played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. (Montano 1981, pages unnumbered)

When Linda Montano arrived in San Francisco in 1970, she was “the chicken woman” – as a sculptor, she had worked with live chickens in the late sixties, eventually replacing the birds herself […] Her format varies, she has simply appeared in huge chicken wings and padded shoes on a street corner and done her weird “chicken dances” for the passers-by; she has also constructed formal, sculptural sets to contain her more introspective actions […] The roles she adopts are all facets of her complex personal self-examination, and the situations she creates function as “meditations” on the nature of these roles. (Kelb 1977: 46)