“For decades, the tumultuous period in art history that followed abstract expressionism has been explained through a proliferation of labels. Pop art and Earth art, minimalism and postmodernism, performance art and conceptual art — all these terms and more have been used in various attempts to organize the chaotic impulses that revolutionized the art world beginning in the late 1950s. With Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955-1972, UCSB professors Bruce Robertson and Ninotchka Bennahum have overturned these labels in favor of a new interpretation of history that puts women, dance, California, and the ‘radical body’ on an even footing with men, painting, New York, and the ‘anxious objects’ of postmodern art. It’s a daring and richly evocative revision that challenges received ideas while championing some of the most interesting and neglected work of the period in any medium. Fittingly for…