Groundbreaking choreographer Rudy Perez, a trailblazer of postmodern dance, dies at age 93

Groundbreaking choreographer Rudy Perez, a pioneer of 1960s postmodern dance, died Friday, according to Sarah Swenson, a fellow choreographer, friend and member of Perez’s company.

Perez died of complications from asthma. He was 93.

Perez’s minimalist but wildly experimental work, marked by spare, precise movements, helped ignite a budding Los Angeles dance scene after he moved west from New York in the late 1970s. L.A.’s open spaces and natural landscapes inspired his innovative, site-specific works; and his interpretive abstract expressionism was so revelatory at the time, it opened up the dance landscape to new approaches.

“He came to L.A. as a major artist, a choreographic genius known for making his own rules,” choreographer Lula Washington told