In 1959, the Florence-born dancer Simone Forti moved to New York City to study at the Merce Cunningham Studio. There she discovered the avant-garde composer John Cage (Cunningham’s partner in work and life), whose music pushed her to experiment. Forti became a pioneering choreographer in a generation that was treating dance conceptually. Indeed, she is cited as the inspiration for the early 60s Judson Church group. In a 2020 interview, speaking of herself and her Judson colleagues, Forti said, “As a dancer I was not so interested in what dancers before me had done. I was much more interested in what painters were doing now. . . . Dada was very important to us as a permission to invent ideas, and to try things, and to break expectations.” Forti is now 87 and this major exhibition includes notes, documents, and videos from her six-decade career. Weekly performances of her best-known works will be staged at the museum. —Jensen Davis