Word: cunningham
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Initially, Cunningham used such chance procedures as coin-tossing only to determine the order in which dance sequences would appear, not as a method of composition. Chance-directed composition is still relatively rare in his work. Yet even when chance processes direct the evolution of the dance itself, such surrender to chance is not at all the same as abandonment to chaos. Cunningham sees this technique of composition as "a mode of freeing my imagination from its own cliches," as he told the Herald's Cass, as a liberating activity which permits the dance to respond to the discipline...
...Cunningham's methods of chance and random juxtaposition culminate in those stage presentations designated "Events," which his company has performed periodically since 1964. In an Event, Cunningham combines a series of discrete sequences from previously-choreographed dances to form a continuous whole, with one sequence often beginning before another has ended. The music and costumes are seldom those used with the original dances, and although the program lists the works from which the sequences are extracted it is rarely possible to tell what is being performed when...
...enormously flexible format: each Event is tailored to the specific performing situation, while the range of the Cunningham repertoire and the almost infinite possibilities of sequence combination insure that no one Event will ever duplicate another choreographically. And as the Times's Barnes has pointed out, each Event is a beautiful demonstration of the integrity and continuity of Cunningham's works; the frankly arbitrary flow of sequence to sequence creates a startlingly organic whole...
...Cunningham's reliance on Events continues to provoke controversy. Ballet Review's Jack Anderson accuses him of disregarding the audience in the name of practicality, and a number of critics have pointed out that a ninety-minute Event, without intermission, can become thoroughly tedious. The final verdict is not yet in, but Cunningham himself upholds the validity of a format which allows for "not so much an evening of dance, as the experience of dance...
...strongly intellectual overtones, however, Cunningham's dance is an art of the body, not of the mind. He once described his choreographic process to Tomkins...