Pick Up Performance Co. (Pick Up Co.) is a development, production, and presenting organization. Founded by choreographer/director David Gordon (1936-2022). In 1992, the Pick Up Co. expanded its artistic leadership to support the work of writer/director Ain Gordon, his son, who now helms the company. Since 1978 the Pick Up Co. has produced more than 100 performance works via multi-year production/development models in partnership with leading performance venues, community organizations, and universities including BAM Next Wave, NY Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Baryshnikov Arts, 651 Arts. La MaMa ETC (all NY); Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (IL), Arizona Arts Live, UCLA Center for the Art of Performance, William Way LGBT Community Center (PA), the Mark Taper Forum (CA), International Festival of Arts & Ideas (CT), National Performance Network, and Williams College (MA), to cite a few.

In 2022, in recognition of its familial artistic roots, the Pick Up Co. established a “friends & family” initiative to support the individual projects of artists who have previously collaborated with Ain or David Gordon. Project Artists include choreographer/writer Emily Coates, performance/visual artist John Kelly and the 11 artists in the LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project.

The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project – NYC Innovators. Recently, the Pick Up Co. launched a multi-artist multi-year project creating producer and archivist teams to teams to collaborate and facilitate archives for 11 LGBTQ+ artists who collectively mark seminal chapters in the last 50 years of New York’s alternative dance/performance scene. The goals are to assist the artists in preparing their archives for a permanent home and to find platforms to make each of these archives available to the public. The artists are the Five Lesbian Brothers (5-member collective of Moe Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and Lisa Kron), Ain Gordon, John Kelly, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Richard Move, Lola Pashalinski, Carmelita Tropicana. The Brooklyn Academy of Music commissioned an introductory exhibition of the project The LGBTQ+ Artists Archive Project - 1st Draft in the BAM Harvey Rudin Family Gallery February–June 2024. For more information, a project website is under construction at lgbtqartistsarchive.org, and project public events are listed below.