Artifact 1: Research paper from Dance 461
Merce Cunningham: The World’s Greatest Choreographer
Merce Cunningham is one of the most highly respected dancers and choreographers of his time. His progression as an artist is one that spans over several decades and is continuing to progress in the dance world through the footsteps he left behind. He may have begun his journey as a single struggling artist, but he quickly proved himself to be someone worth acknowledging, and contained talents worth developing. Merce Cunningham was able to create a timeless post-modern style of dance through his experiences with Martha Graham and her company, the development of his own technique with partner John Cage, and his belief in the spontaneity of performance.
Merce Cunningham found his true potential when he became part of the Martha Graham Company. As a young man he received his training at Cornish School of Performing and Visual Arts in Seattle. Here he learned the Martha Graham technique. It was at Mills College in Oakland, California that he had the opportunity to perform in front of Martha Graham herself. There was very little hesitation from her when she asked him to join her company. At just twenty years old he chose to accept her offer and immediately picked up and moved cross county to New York City.
Being apart of the Martha Graham Company was a key point in the development of who Merce would eventually become as a proclaimed dancer and choreographer. It was not only an experience with significant advancements in his technique, but an enlightening situation that revealed all the potential dance held for one longing to create. Merce learned how to be an individual artist and he learned what it meant to have his own ideas. As much as he appreciated Martha Graham’s technique, he realized there were also things about her company that he did not agree with. For example, he didn’t like her incorporation of emotion; its message was never clear to him. He also didn’t like the incorporation of a storyline to support the movement. He once said, “Even when I was first there, I thought the way she moved was very amazing, but I didn’t think the rest of it was interesting at all.... I just tried to see what the movement was, not to expect it to be like she did it, not in the least.” (Chance 1) These observations were the beginning of Merce’s understanding of who he was and who he wanted to be. He entered into the Graham company as a young, naive, inexperienced artist; he left as a well known dancer and choreographer, well on his way to changing the world. His choice to leave her company was bold, as he had become one of the most prominent in the company.
John Cage, Merce’s eventual life partner, was the one who prompted Merce to leave the Graham Company and begin making a name for himself. Merce’s passion for choreography is what gave him the ability to create a successful and long-lasting company. His first solo show took place in 1944. His innovative ideas and unique post-modern ideals really began to take form from here. John Cage would accompany him musically, and Merce would dance. The two of them formed a perfectly harmonized duo that gained a lot of positive attention.
Merce believed in “seeing clearly” rather than feeling deeply. It was a concept that opposed Martha Graham’s beliefs in every way. This is one of the reasons why he was such a curious creature. He did dance with the Graham Company for six years, yet after that point his technique was detached from that experience in every way. “Modern dance—especially Graham’s variety of modern dance—is widely regarded as “hot”, rather than a “cool” medium, as the most tactile and perhaps the most primal of the arts. What then becomes of modern dance when choreographers such as Cunningham begin to cultivate the cool, detached, impersonal sensibility that characterized the New York art world following the repudiation of abstract expressionism?” (Copeland)
“It was this curiosity about the mechanics of movement and the physical process of getting from one position to another that compelled Cunningham. With this fascination with movement firmly entrenched in his creative psyche, he began his first dance compositions.”(Vaughan) Early works such as Totem Ancestor (1942) and Root of an Unfocus (1944) displayed Cunningham’s unique ideas combined with the technique he gained from Martha Graham. If one were to look back on Cunningham’s earlier works the Graham technique is clearly part of it. However, as quickly as Graham came, it left and was never returned to again.
In 1953 the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was officially formed. It gave him the opportunity to expand his groundbreaking ideas, and test its effectiveness on a wider variety of audiences. Before this point Cunningham was a highly successful dancer and performer, but his focus now turned to choreography. He had a fascination with the elements of choreography that had not been explored before. It was where his passion lay and where his legend was born. His partner, John Cage, became the music director and together they began their quest for greatness. Cunningham’s unrelenting interest in space, time, and technology was the focal point from the very beginning and remained as the underlying current throughout his entire career.
However, this new age approach to dance did not simply fall into Cunningham’s lap. He had to be willing to sacrifice and accept all offers. Viewers found his concepts to be “weird” and at first the detached post-modern feel was easily misunderstood. For a period of months the Merce Cunningham Dance Company traveled across the country in a Volkswagen bus. It had just enough room to hold six dancers, the musicians, Merce, and John. It was all they could afford, and they were more than willing to comply. Eventually they were able to take their company international. The company’s first international tour in 1964—which included performances in Western and Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, and Japan—solidified their stability as a well-known modern dance company. From then on out they had a constant stream of national and international bookings (Chance).
From the very beginning Merce Cunningham and John Cage wanted to work on the connections between music and dance while keeping them independent from one another. Cage would compose music, Cunningham would choreograph a piece, and then they would put them together and see what the result was. The relationship between music and dance that they created came to reveal much more than they could have possibly imagined. Music was not dependent on the dance, but equal to it. That simple, yet profound concept was then and will forever be connected to Merce Cunningham.
Although the world often looks at Cunningham as a singular individual in the modern dance world, his accomplishments would not have been made without his partner John Cage. Cage really was Cunningham’s co-founder in every way possible. His genius musical mind was the key component in all of their discoveries. His support and motivation was also a major element in Cunningham’s progression from dancer to choreographer. Without Cage, the thinking goes, Cunningham could have been another Baryshnikov or another Balanchine, or both rolled into one. But he wouldn’t have been Merce, and maybe he wouldn’t have been the man who revolutionized dance (Swed). Cage should be considered the greatest “tool” Cunningham was gifted with. However, he was much more than a tool, he was an equal in every way. It was a side-by-side collaborative partnership that made “the Cunningham way” what it is today. Cunningham had Cage by his side literally from the very beginning to the very end. It would be interesting to know what would have become of Merce Cunningham if he did not have John Cage by his side.
Thus the Cage/Cunningham collaboration, which began decades before the real flourishing of these various significant societal changes, had very strong intellectual underpinnings related to the broad changes in society; their ironic and sometimes bizarre works speak clearly to the issues of the time, the rebellion of youth, and the inevitable changes brought about by technology, which changes shocked and abused the sensibilities of the previous generation (Swed).
The gradual evolution from this idea became a whole new way of dance. It essentially created its own genre of improvisation, performance, and choreography. The autonomous yet coordinated confluence of dance and music would lead to chance collisions and near misses, giving Cunningham's work a sense of freshness and unpredictability (Chance). Because there was never telling how the movement would relate to the music or vice versa, an element of risk and surprise was always involved. Cunningham found this exciting and refreshing. He felt that dancers needed to have something that would allow change and breakthrough; otherwise dancers were often stuck in a rut of repeated movement and style. It gave them the ability to have freedom and precision at the same time.
As Merce Cunningham’s unique equation of music and dance began to take a more permanent and popular stand in the dance world it started to expand and grow as well. The most famous and controversial of these concerned the relationship between dance and music, which they concluded may occur in the same time and space, but should be created independently of one another. The two also made extensive use of chance procedures, abandoning not only musical forms, but narrative and other conventional elements of dance composition—such as cause and effect, and climax and anticlimax. For Cunningham the subject of his dances was always dance itself (Biography). This innovative idea, eventually known as “Chance Dance”, came from a unique place for Cunningham and Cage.
Cunningham said, “John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the "I Ching," the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams. Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64—the number of the hexagrams —to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations…Well, I took this also for dance…”
Whether or not Cunningham realized that his “Chance Dance” creation would become the staple to modern dance it is today is neither here nor there. The fact of that matter is it did. It is known that the Cunningham Company will often rehearse in silence and hear their music for the first time right before going on stage. Rehearsal time would be spent using the chance procedure to come up with a sequence of events. “His dances are not lacking in structure, but the structure is organic, not preconceived.”(Vaughan). By doing this the performance always held a sense of surprise, suspense, and invention for the audience as well as the dancers. It gave it an organic feel that is uniquely its own.
This area of Cunningham’s career, more than anything else, is what he is most known for in the world. Any dancer who uses random numbering, or selection to help in choreography is automatically deemed a “Cunningham dancer”. It is perceived as a specific approach to choreography and dance, and more specifically, modern dance. As profound and groundbreaking as Cunningham’s philosophies were, it never made for a complete transformation in the modern dance world. Yes, it became more widely used, but everyone did not use it. It is this important fact that makes Cunningham’s style his own style. If everyone did it then it would not be consider him. The distinction between Cunningham and Graham and Ailey and so many others just reiterates the crucial point that diversity is crucial to success in anything in the world.
Another important aspect to becoming an internationally acclaimed modern dance artist for years to come is acceptance and acknowledgement by the general public. People recognize and appreciate quality work. Cunningham does not have the title as “one of the world’s greatest choreographers” for nothing. He always created a sheer richness in his invention of steps. Cunningham believed that every day should hold something new: any new work he made started, with a step that would eventually lead him to discover something he did not know before. His foreword seeking nature carried until the end of his life. Audiences across the world were constantly surprised by Cunningham’s works. He never stopped expanding, so they never stopped wondering. His company was performing new works by him until the year he died. It was actually Cunningham’s wish that the company would disband once he was gone.
An active choreographer and mentor to the arts world until his death at the age of 90, Cunningham earned some of the highest honors bestowed in the arts. Among his many awards are the National Medal of Arts (1990) and the MacArthur Fellowship (1985). He also received the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award in 2009, Japan’s Praemium Imperiale in 2005, the British Laurence Olivier Award in 1985, and was named Officier of the Legion d’Honneur in France in 2004 (Macaulay).
Merce Cunningham never stopped asking “What if?” and “Why?”. He appeared in every single concert the Merce Cunningham Company put on until he was 70 years old in 1989. “The British ballet teacher Richard Glasstone maintains that the three greatest dancers he ever saw were Fred Astaire, Margot Fonteyn and Mr. Cunningham. He was American modern dance’s equivalent of Nijinsky: the long neck, the animal intensity, the amazing leap.” (Macaulay). With an unstoppable attitude like this it is no wonder he was able to achieve so much.
Merce Cunningham literally came from humble beginnings and built his way to the top. As a young boy he was just a dancer; then he was a dancer on the Martha Graham Company. Martha Graham was his gateway to the professional world. She believed in his ability and he was able to deliver. It was also the point in his career where be became a true artist and started thinking like one as well. When John Cage convinced him to leave the Graham Company behind and begin his own company he wasn’t afraid to do so. Together they journeyed toward discovery and breakthrough throughout their entire lifelong partnership. The most distinguished accomplishment being the discovery that music and dance can be independent of each other and still manage to come together as equal partners. The development has remained cemented in the modern dance world and will continue to be linked to Cunningham for years to come. Chance dance falls in this category as well. Many have chosen to use this technique as a tool for choreography and find its effectiveness to be very successful. If Cunningham hadn’t been so dedicated to discovery none of his developments may have never had happened.
Cunningham once wrote, “You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.” This sums up the course of his life perfectly. He refused to stop or be stopped by anyone. He had help, he had support, and he had determination. He is truly one of the world’s most recognized choreographers and dancers in history. He changed the face of modern dance with his post-modern breakthroughs. The dance world would not be what it is without him.
Works Cited
(1953), Chance. "Presidential Lectures: Merce Cunningham." Welcome! Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia. 2005. Web. 12 Apr. 2011. <http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/cunningham/index.html>.
"Biography." Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://www.merce.org/about/biography.php>.
Copeland, Roger. "Merce Cunningham: the Modernizing of ..." Google Books. Web. 6 Apr. 2011. <http://books.google.com/books?id=dWGI7xBAR7UC>.
Kassing, Gayle. "Merce Cunningham." History of Dance: an Interactive Arts Approach. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007. Print.
Macaulay; Alastair. "Merce Cunningham, Visionary Choreographer, Dies at 90 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 27 July 2009. Web. 6 Apr. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/arts/dance/28cunningham.html?pagewanted=4>.
Sunday, C.M. "John Cage and Merce Cunningham: 1942-1992." Connexions - Sharing Knowledge and Building Communities. 1995. Web. 11 Apr. 2011. <http://cnx.org/content/m13248/latest/>.
Swed, Mark. "Merce Cunningham and John Cage, Forever Inseparable | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times." Top of the Ticket | Obama Warns New Ivory Coast Leader on Governing Inclusively | Los Angeles Times. 31 July 2009. Web. 7 Apr. 2011. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/07/merce-cunningham-and-john-cage.html>.
Vaughan, David. "Merce Cunningham - A Lifetime of Dance | American Masters | PBS." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. 16 Dec. 2001. Web. 9 Apr. 2011. <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/merce-cunningham/a-lifetime-of- dance/566/>.
ARTIFACT 2:
Coming Soon...
Coming Soon...
A digital recording of an oral presentation to be done in Fall 2012.
