Word: cunningham
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Cunningham's dance does demand a prepared or prewarned audience. Like the abstract artists who design his sets and costumes--Frank Stella, Warhol, and Rauschenberg--and the electronic musicians composing his scores--John Cage, David Tudor, and Earl Brown (husband of Carolyn Brown)--Cunningham explicitly denies traditional unities of the dance...
...EXAMPLE, as Calvin Tomkins noted in the May 4 issue of the New Yorker, Cunningham believes that movement and sound function independently in a dance. As John Cage puts it, they merely coincide in Space-Time. So at one premiere night the Cunningham troupe heard the score for the piece for the first time. A dance, according to Cunningham, does not mean anything that can be translated into words or music. It has no explicitly dramatic or psychological content. Particular movements may evoke emotional responses in the audience, but these responses will vary from person to person. Cunningham is interested...
...Finally, Cunningham believes in the interest-ingness of the ordinary world with its chance patterns of movement. At one point last Sunday, the dancers appeared on stage with street clothes covering their leotards. The stage manager wandered on stage, looking more like a dancer than any of the troupe who were resting on stage in a variety of comfortable "Not Dance" positions. The dancers meandered on and off stage. The bewildered audience was at times presented with no dancers, just the transparent and decorated plastic envelopes of the set, and the rattle of the score. One by one the audience...
SURPRISE is an essential element in Cunningham's compositions. He switches wildly from movement to movement, from mood to mood, never employing the traditional ABA structure that every beginning choreographer is taught to respect. The result is a fragmented, elusive kind of brilliance which is in great part due to the unusual richness of Cunningham's choreographic vocabulary. So, in his solo, "Collage III," Cunningham lightly explodes from one motion to the next. There are no echoes in the dance. He sculpts random and beautiful moods in the air. For some the experience is wonderful...
...special note should be inserted concerning Cunningham's use of the prime dance sin--ugliness. Ugliness often figures in the movements: it is part of experience. The technical competence of this troupe is unsurpassed, hence their awkwardnesses are calculated. They do not want to float like swans or swing like Gower Champion. Cunningham's goal is creating new qualities of experience for his dancers and audiences. His concerts are magnificent events not to be missed...