Richard Long was born in 1945 in Bristol, England, where he currently lives and works. Since the 1960s, Long has radically redefined the boundaries of sculpture, making use of nature as both his subject and medium. Whether taking nature itself into the gallery, or in transforming the surface of the earth, Long and other land artists have pointed to the importance of our natural surroundings in ways that are utterly different from 18th or 19th century precedents.

Dancing Stone Circle (1990) is made from grey stones in varying shapes and sizes; placed evenly apart, forming a circle on the ground within a predetermined perimeter measuring 18 feet in diameter. Each stone is placed longitudinally on its flattest, most stable side, with the inner edge over or at the perimeter line. Richard Long was a pioneer of the Land art movement, and the circle has been a recurring shape in his works since the 1960s. Land art (or Earth art) is characterized by the use of mainly locally-found, naturally-occurring materials - such as stones, water, and soil - which are often sited in remote outdoor locations or conversely, displaced into a gallery setting. Taking nature as both his subject and his medium, Long's practice expands conventional ideas about the presentation and definition of sculpture, and challenges the commercialization of art-making.

Long's outdoor works are traces of his physical movement through the landscape, and their ephemerality marks the passage of time. A connection can also be drawn to the remnants of the ancient stone circles scattered across Long's native England.

The title of Dancing Stone Circle relates to its first presentation as the setting for Molissa Fenley's experimental dance, The Floor Dances (Requiem for the Living), performed at The Joyce Theater in New York in 1990. Like Long's sculptural practice, Fenley's dance focused on nature, life, and death - accompanied by David Moodie's lighting and Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs - this dance paid "homage to the wildlife lost by the Alaskan oil spill of March 1989". Long's stone circle was the only set piece for the performance, in which Fenley's entire dance took place.