{"id":3061,"date":"2021-10-10T15:58:56","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T12:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disco.teak.fi\/tanssin-historia\/?p=3061"},"modified":"2023-10-05T12:09:46","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T09:09:46","slug":"merce-cunningham-65-years-of-rethinking-choreography-and-artistic-coexistence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disco.teak.fi\/tanssin-historia\/en\/merce-cunningham-65-years-of-rethinking-choreography-and-artistic-coexistence\/","title":{"rendered":"Merce Cunningham \u2013 65 Years of Rethinking Choreography and Artistic Coexistence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Cunningham\u2019s dances decentralize space, telescope or stretch time, allow for sudden unison activity, repetition, and rich variety and dispersal.<\/p>\n[1]<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Modern dance visionary Merce Cunningham (1919\u20132009) had a 65-year career as a dancer and choreographer. He is known not only as a developer of the Cunningham technique, but also as a reinventor of choreography and composition. Many of the key features of postmodern dance, such as the use of everyday movement or the abandonment of front-facing space, were already part of Cunningham\u2019s work and further developed at Judson Dance Theater.[2]<\/a> Many dancers who were active at Judson had worked or trained with Cunningham. Merce Cunningham can therefore be seen as a hinge or sliding transition between white modern dance and postmodern dance in the United States.[3]<\/a> (see article The Postmodern Spectrum<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham had grown up with American modern dance in Centralia, Washington State.[4]<\/a> In the late 1930s, Martha Graham invited him to join her company in New York, and Cunningham danced as a soloist in Graham\u2019s major choreographies such as El Penitente <\/em>(1940) and Appalachian Spring <\/em>(1944) until 1946. (see chapter Developments of Dance Modernisms from the 20th Century Onwards<\/a>) <\/strong>Cunningham began his own choreographic work in the late 1930s, and his collaboration with composer John Cage strongly influenced his understanding of choreography. In 1944, Cunningham gave his first solo concert, with music by Cage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s provided Cunningham and Cage a place to teach and develop their artistic work. Cunningham choreographed dances that were fast and light, close to ballet in technique, and partly ironic, but did not include storytelling or emphasise emotional expression of the body. Their work resonated well outside the field of dance, attracting interest from visual artists, musicians and poets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An event organised by Cage at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1952, a kind of happening, brought together artists from several areas to experiment with ideas about how different arts could coexist. Cage was inspired by Zen influences and Antonin Artaud\u2019s book Towards Critical Theatre<\/em> (1938). The event lasted 45 minutes, during which Cunningham danced, Cage spoke, David Tudor played the piano, Robert Rauschenberg played records, and Charles Olson and M.C. Richards read poems. Rauschenberg\u2019s white paintings were hung from the ceiling. The audience sat in the middle of the room and could only see part of the action at a time.[5]<\/a> The multidisciplinary encounter was a step forward in Cunningham and Cage\u2019s artistic collaboration; a cornerstone of this was close interaction with the major artists of the era. In addition to Cage, Cunningham was strongly influenced by the thinking of Robert Rauschenberg, and he became the visual artist for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (initially Merce Cunningham and Dance Company), founded in 1953, until 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dance, Movement, Technique<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cunningham saw dance technique as a way to expand the body\u2019s range of movement. He had taken ballet classes at the School of American Ballet, founded by George Balanchine, and appreciated the systematic foot technique of ballet. From modern dance, Cunningham picked up the versatile movement of the torso, especially the use of the spine, which curves and bends in all directions, and which he had adopted as a dancer in Martha Graham\u2019s company. Cunningham\u2019s technique is therefore a combination of the supported technicality of ballet and the powerful movement and arcs of the torso of modern dance. For Cunningham, the aim in a technique class is to make \u201cthe movement pass completely into and through the body.\u201d[6]<\/a> Technique increases the dancer\u2019s control of the body and is a collaboration of physical and mental energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dancer\u2019s movement in Cunningham\u2019s work is extremely careful and concentrated. Movement is central to the dance, as Cunningham did not seek to convey symbolic meaning or the psychological dimension of dance through movement, as in American modern dance. Nor did he want to direct the audience\u2019s interpretation of his works or give them reading instructions; it was enough for the dancers to move on stage while the audience watched them move. Carrie Noland has shown that Cunningham did not, however, deny the content that emerged from movement \u2013 especially the narrative elements that emerged through the use of chance methods or the emotional content of physicality, even the eroticism or cultural, social or historical meanings that movement evoked \u2013 but allowed dance to evoke emotions and ideas in surprising and therefore new ways. The starting point for the dances could also be an observation of everyday life or even the energy between the dancers.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Cunningham, any kind of movement was useful as dance material. He was interested in stillness, but also in elaborate movement sequences. Each piece required its own way of approaching movement, rather than repeating the movement language of the previous choreography. In Excerpts from Symphonie pour un homme seul <\/em>(1952), Cunningham first used everyday movement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n