Dance Constructions at the Reuben Gallery and Yoko Ono's loft were "a watershed moment when the relationship between bodies and objects, movement and sculpture, was being fundamentally rethought." Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer have cited Forti's 1961 Dance Constructions concert as a pivotal influence on their creative direction which encouraged them to establish the Judson Dance Theater, a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village between 1962 and 1964. On the exhibition of Forti's Dance Constructions, Yvonne Rainer wrote, in Simone Forti: Thinking With the Body (2014), "it seemed that a vacuum sealed that evening for over a year until her performers could get the Judson Dance Theater up and running. Simone was its inspiration and fountainhead. We all owe her." Dancer Steve Paxton also wrote, "All I know is that this small, radical group of works by Forti was like a pebble tossed into a large, still, and complacent pond. The ripples radiated. Most notably, Forti's event happened prior to the first performance at Judson Memorial Church by the choreographers from Robert Dunn's composition class, and they took courage from it." (2014) In December 2015, the Museum of Modern Art in New York purchased the Dance Constructions as part of their permanent collection. Happenings In 1962, Forti and Robert Morris separated. Forti started living and working with artist Robert Whitman, and the two married in 1962. During their six year marriage, Forti was part of Whitman's performance group and she collaborated with him on many of his Happenings. Some of these performances included American Moon (1960), Hole (1963), Flower (1963), Water (1963), Nighttime Sky (1965), and Prune Flat (1965). During this time, Simone wrote and performed under the name Simone Whitman. After her divorce from Whitman, Forti accompanied her parents on a trip to Italy in 1968 and decided to stay and live in Rome. Forti began working with gallerist Fabio Sargentini, whose gallery, L'Attico, was a gathering point for Arte Povera artists at the time. Forti showed a two-evening retrospective of Dance Constructions at L'Attico in 1968. In addition, Forti performed two of her other pieces, Bottom and Sleep Walkers (alternatively titled Zoo Mantras ). Sleep Walkers was developed out of Forti's observations of animals at the Rome Zoo, now known as the Bioparco di Roma. Forti specifically refers to developing the movement of swinging her head back