Forum; Merce Cunningham: A Celebration

Thank you very much. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is Forum. Dance is independent. It can, as it were, stand on its own feet. So therefore, music can accompany dance, but it is not a part of a dance that Cunningham makes. See Vreeland-Dalva, theater critic and contributing editor to Dance Magazine. Merced Cunningham is now almost 70 years old.

He's been making dances for 45 years. People across the country have seen him with his Merced Cunningham dance company, although he's considered one of the great revolutionaries of dance. He's also a great classist. He makes enduring works of art based on some original premises, which have changed the way people think about, look at and go about making dances. This is Olive Graham. Today's subject on Forum is Merced Cunningham and his place in contemporary modern dance. He has, at the age of 69, provided direction, energy and inspiration to decades and generations of American modern dancers. Noted dancer and choreographer Deborah Hay describes how Cunningham personally influenced her art. I think Merced's influence on so many of us, and that continues, is we, it's like you have your parents and your parents influence how you are, you have your mother and your

father, and you don't even know how they shape you. And then there comes a time, if you are a practicing artist and you're young, where there is this figure in the world, like Merced Cunningham, who shapes how you want to be as an artist without even knowing it, that the purity of this being at work is so attractive to you that you unconsciously, without even knowing it, shape your shape, how you perceive, you end up almost mimicking the being, the artist, he becomes the model for how you would like to identify yourself as an artist. And I think in that respect, he's had a very, you know, I could see it in people, you know, certainly all of the people who I worked with at Jetson is different and is varied as we

were and continue to be, there's a kind of purist that really, nothing, we are not sidetracked by much, except the development of our vision. And I feel that Merced and his being, when I walked into the gymnasium to see the open rehearsal last week and I said, I'm sitting in that chair, that's when I got hit with that reality of those moments of seeing an artist that, you know, when you're at that ready to be shaped into the artist that you are to become, you usually find someone like that and I think, do shop did that for painters and sculptors and, and Cunningham and Cage and I think Cage did that for dancers and artists and musicians and I think, I think Merced has had, you know, I would say shaping the way we want to be artists and so I'm very beginning at a very unconscious level and really continue

it. It's our send up into the world, yes, this is the person I want to be as my model without even knowing it. Settle or major changes and permutations worked upon the dance genre, sometimes go unnoticed by the public at large, but critics and choreographers have paid close attention to Cunningham's influential movements and statements. Critic Nancy Rielandalva describes the experience of viewing a Cunningham performance. When you go see the Merced Cunningham dance company, you see a dance and you hear music, but they're not made together and although they may comment on each other, they have no relationship other than coincidence. It's very much like listening to the radio and brushing your teeth. They happen at the same time, but there's no true relationship between them. Nonetheless, someone watching you might think you were brushing your teeth to the music. Does this describe modern dance as well or simply modern dance as seen through Merced Cunningham? Modern dance as well, actually we have come to think of modern dance as dance

that's not ballet and that has a certain use of the body. For example, ballet is anti-gravity and modern dance works with gravity that's very simplistic. But this idea of working without music, although it's seen in other companies, is not a tenant of modern dance any more than ballet. And I call it the separation of church and state, is something that came from Cunningham and is, although there have been occasional others to experiment with it from time to time, only Cunningham uses it as a principal tenant of his work. Dance critic Sally Baines is associate professor of dance and theater history at Cornell University. She has written extensively about dance and provides the following outline of attitudes toward Merced Cunningham through recent decades. From my research into the Judson Dance Theatre, it does seem to me that there was a kind of double attraction there that the members of the Judson Dance Theatre were both inspired

by Cunningham and also frustrated by either working in his company or what they saw in his company. People wanted to expand even further what could be done in the dance. And David Vaughn mentioned collage, that's the title of the Brandeis piece, right, in which people were doing things like brushing their teeth, doing everyday kinds of movements. That was an extraordinary innovation, but it was something that Cunningham didn't as a rule continue in his own work. He just has different interests and he was interested, I think, more in technical work. And this was one aspect of his work that many younger choreographers in the 60s were fascinated by and explored in much more depth than he was interested in doing. People asked questions about the gaze. People have talked about the fact that they felt that there was a kind of performance style in the company that they wanted to make less, that they wanted to make more intimate. Questions about technique. Technique is something that Cunningham has always been interested in and many people were interested in getting rid of it altogether or in finding alternative

techniques, maybe out of other non-western movement forms, maybe out of just looking at the everyday body and trying as Steve Paxton did in the early 60s to just find a pedestrian style. And of course, his Deborah has done in many different ways. People were interested in changing the space even more radically than Cunningham. In other words, he broke all of these paths that people then wanted to expand even further. The idea that you might use spaces other than stages, people were starting to experiment even before, with before he got to the idea of making these events. And I sometimes think David and I have talked about this before, that some of his own innovations in the 60s were in turn influenced by his younger contemporaries who were reacting against him. I wonder whether his, and maybe we should just ask him whether his use of unconventional spaces would have been possible without the people at the Judson dancing in a gym, in

a roller skating rink, in a church sanctuary, and in tiny pristine theater and so on. They wanted to use improvisation in ways that Cunningham was not always willing to do, because again, he has very specific ideas about, for instance, the speed of his dances. It would be almost impossible for dancers to improvise. I hope Deborah will talk about story in 1964, which is a piece in which he did introduce improvisation, and from his point of view, was a total disaster in a way. I think he didn't like so much what the dancers did when they were free to improvise with them. And it brought up for that generation of questions about freedom. Where is the freedom in the choreographic process? If the freedom is in the choreography but not in the performance, will some of these people in the 60s want it to make it there in every single part of the process? Just a couple of other things about the 60s, I think that notion that music and dance could be separated obviously led to something even further, which was that you might make dances to know music at all.

And again, this was something that people felt maybe Cunningham wasn't going so far as to do, or that the musicians might be dancers, or that the dancers might become musicians, that people might talk instead of have musical accompaniment. All of these kinds of breakthroughs that in a way Cunningham's work opened the way too. People could take these ideas even further, expand them even further. One aspect about the 60s that also seems to resurface in the 80s, I think, is the whole collaborative aspect, and that specific constellation of Cunningham, Cage, and Roushianburg, which was not only an inspiration to dancers, but also led to visual artists and musicians, including Roushianburg himself, being inspired to make dances. And of course, Caroli Schneeman is one of those visual artists who began working in Danza. So basically, the stage was opened up by this example of this particular collaboration to activities of all kinds by all artists and all combinations of art

forms. Without worrying too much about what category it got put in. Even if in their collaboration it was Cunningham making the dance, Cage making or commissioning the music, Roushianburg making the designs per se. It really led to, and sparked all kinds of other ideas about the relationships of the art forms in the dance event. And I think that in the 80s, that interarts aspect, after a kind of generation of minimalism in the 70s, when each art form kind of saw its own separateness from the other art forms. In the 80s, that whole interarts aspect has taken on a new form in what some people called the new opera, opera by people like Robert Wilson, or even a kind of what I think of as a one person collaboration, Laurie Anderson, and other grand collaborations, which owe something to Diagle of, something to the Cunningham Cage, Roushianburg collaboration, but obviously also something to Judson Dance Theatre, Grand Union, and the various performance art situations that had developed in the 70s. Now I think in the 80s what younger choreographers who worked

with Cunningham are interested in working on is also a reaction to and an expansion of his work, but tempered by what the previous generation had tried, and also by what his work is now. And one thing again talked about this morning that I think has been an influence is the early ballet association of modern dance. That Cunningham didn't fear or hate ballet, the way many modern dancers of the 40s did. And he was interested in looking at ballet technique and using it and appropriating it just as many postmodern choreographers are now again in the 80s. And so some of us sometimes profess amazement that people are interested in working with ballet companies or using ballet and they're working yet Cunningham did all this long time ago. So certainly a whole notion of virtuosic technique that Cunningham is very interested in is a new interest in the 80s after people had gone through the procedure of getting rid of it, challenging it, and so on in the 60s and 70s. I think

the whole aspect of partnering which I see is really a core to Cunningham's work, and which is part of what virtuosic technique has always incorporated in dance, both in social dancing and in ballet is interesting to the present generation. Dancing to the music is one aspect of Cunningham's influence that the present generation is interested in that Cunningham lost interest in. So his whole separation of music and dance is in a sense being challenged now by people who are very interested in either new, well other people are interested I should say once again in collaborating with musicians, not just dancing to the music but dancing against the music and all the other ways that one can relate to the music. So that seems almost like a return to something pre-Cunningham but also tempered by the fact that Cunningham and those who came after him changed the way we think about those collaborations. Now I think that there are also there's the whole rise of cine dance and video dance and film dance that obviously as David said earlier

today, Cunningham has been a pioneer in. I guess I'll just end by noting I think a few things that the current generation is interested in that I'm not sure that almost seems like a reaction against Cunningham again against the kind of abstract dance that he's interested in making. One has been in the course of the 80s in interest in sexual politics which I think doesn't really get questioned in Cunningham. I mean in his partnering, people will correct me if I'm wrong but usually it's the men lifting the women. But you see dances by younger contemporary choreographers in which women are lifting men and women are lifting women and men are lifting men and I think that there's a kind of conservatism in those particular sexual politics, just what you see on the stage who touches whom and how that people are interested in questioning and going beyond. Certainly there's an interest

now in comedy and I wouldn't say that that's not an aspect of Cunningham's work because it certainly is but there's a kind of more explicit comedy maybe that people are interested in maybe even a verbal comedy. Also an interest in social dancing has always like comedy has always been a part of Cunningham's work. He's a wonderful social dancer. You can see tap dancing in his dances. You can see all sorts of vernacular dance but transformed into something more modernist and abstract and something that the generation of the 80s has been interested in is going back to and quoting those actual forms themselves. And I think the whole aspect of mixing high and low art, something that Twilight Thorpe has been doing, something that seems particularly fascinating to the postmodernism of the 80s and that's part of postmodernism and culture generally. Again it's there, the seeds are there and Cunningham. But I think Cunningham has always been a kind of Cunningham's work has always

been in a sense a form of high art. Didn't have ambitions to be something else. And I think that that's something also that younger generations in the 80s are interested in moving away from it. Nancy Vreeland-Dalva applies the term modernism to modern dance. There are so many terms that we throw around in dance and because dance, criticism and dance history are relatively young disciplines. We tend to borrow from literature and from history, real history, not dance history. I just said that dance history wasn't real which I don't mean. But I mean traditional history, civil war kinds of history. When we use a term like I don't know what we mean when we say modernism and dance because I think everybody

means something different by it. I think that the classical historian means one thing by it. I think the art historian means another. Terminology is a very gritty and difficult thing to deal with. And dance is a very slippery stuff. I think that you know what we're talking about. When you see a dance, then you say, oh, I see why that's called postmodern. But it might be very hard to describe a lot of these terms come from architecture and art. And they're relevance to dance. Well, they're useful handles. We like to have handles on things. But often they reduce something beyond its own grand proportion. Some of these other disciplines produce items more tangible that dance happens to be. Your readers may not be able to even see a mercy cutting ham. How do you relate something that far away from a reader? The reason I like to write dance criticism is because it's such

a challenge and it also gives you an enormous amount of freedom. If you review a play, there's a plot to deal with. You're probably going to have to tell the story or assume that everybody knows about Hamlet. When you review a dance, you're translating. It's like translating from the French into English. You're taking something that is seen and making it something that's written. And the freedom is that you can choose how to describe what happens. You also may be deciding what happens. It's really an atturper to act. There are many different ways to describe dances. Some dance critics feel their goal is to preserve the dance for history through description. I think that at various times we feel that obligation. Some of us more continually than others. Certainly when you're seeing a new dance for the first time, you'd like to tell what that new dance was. However, when you're going to seek a paleo for the zillionth time, you might be more concerned with talking about one tiny nuance of it. There is many ways to write about dances. There are to see it and there are to make it. But yes, one does have an obligation to reveal things to the people who aren't

there. And when you write, for example, for a general newspaper, that is a large part of your job. Is there a narrative element to mercy-cutting hamstands? What a difficult and interesting question. Theoretically not. There is no plot. There is no story per se. I am forced to writing about the novel and our interest in it said that story was what happens and plot is how it happens. There's a lot of how it happens in mercy in that sense. Not actual plotting, but there's a lot going on. In addition, I want to make something very clear. His dances don't have stories, but they are not abstract, but we think of abstract painting. They are full of feeling. It's my opinion. I've come to feel over the years that no dances abstract because people, live people, are doing it. And nothing is abstract that has people in it. In a way, nurses' dances are the opposite of abstract. First of all, the dancers are performing as themselves. They're not assuming a role. So you're seeing real people interpreting movement as themselves. That's a very direct

kind of communication and could hardly be called abstract. However, it's not narrative, what you asked. It doesn't tell a story, but although the dances aren't narrative, we, people, human beings, have an enormous need for narrative, I think, once upon a time. There's a reason we hear bedtime stories. And we have a desire for narrative, and we impose narrative upon the dance. In other words, when you go see Cunningham, you tell yourself a story. Or Merse tells you a story. You just decide what that story is. And when I told Merse to Cunningham, Merse Cunningham, one time about a story I told myself to a dance he laughed and said, well, of course, fairy tales should come true. The first time that I saw a Merse Cunningham true dance, I was particularly struck by the fact that on stage, the dancers did not look like the cookie cutter quarterback dancers that I've seen in more formal kinds of dance situations. Is that peculiar to him? That use of non-uniform dancers is very much a part of modern dance.

And all the modern companies, to some extent, have that kind of diversity. But there is a type. There is a Cunningham dancer. There is a Paul Taylor dancer. There is a Martha Graham dancer. It differentiated because they do that kind of work and come to resemble the kind of dancers who do that work by doing it. I see this very clearly in Cunningham over the years. You see a young dancer come in. And over the years, that dancer's body changes from dancing that kind of work. The same way your body changes if you run. And the same way a tennis player has a different body from a swimmer. And if you are a runner, you're going to have short, bunchy muscles to some extent. And if you're a swimmer, you'll have long, smooth muscles. The kinds of movement we do affects the way our bodies look. In that way, dancers have a certain uniformity. But they're not chosen for type. In the Paul Taylor company, for instance, there's always a shorty what Paul Taylor calls the runt. And this is a woman. And she usually, as he puts it, inherits the earth. There are types. There are recognizable types over the years. They're played by different women.

I think that Merse is drawn to certain qualities. And that over the years, dancers have these recurring qualities as well. When you say types, are you referring to a kind of archetypal image that they pull out on the stage? No, I'm referring to specific physical characteristics. High arches, short waist, long legs. That kind of physical type. Merse, for example, Merse Cunningham does not have earth mothers or types of that kind. I don't think I can think of any choreographer who uses archetypes in that way. I'm wrong, there are. But not in the specific genre of modern dance we're in now. The Yakov Shereer Dance Company and the Merse Cunningham Dance Company, co-commissioned to work Cunningham entitled Cargo X that premiered recently in Austin, Texas.

Mr. Shereer describes Cunningham's form and techniques as applied to deaf dancers. The first time we saw a performance by Merse, by then I was already experimenting with deaf dancers. I never thought that those people will be able to perform because the way we were relating to the music, it was such a religion. You work with the music. If you put a set or chair on stage, you have to relate and use it. Gucci's scenery was painted and you will touch it this way, and you'll do your hair this way and you couldn't move anything. Here comes this person. You do this because you don't want to listen to the music because you are bombarded from everywhere and you look at the dance and it's totally unrelated and you look and you look and if you sensitive, suddenly it all begins to make sense to you. I think the first performance that

he performed in Israel, I thought that makes sense. I think the deaf people will take this method even to the extreme because not only the deaf dancers will work in silence and we will put the music the night of the performance but the dancers will never hear that music. They will never relate to the music. They always talk about feeling the rhythm but music is not a combination of rhythms. Music is a combination of sounds. It's much richer than only rhythm. So adding music to the dance composition made so much sense and the methods that Muskhanin Han used allowed the deaf dancers to really be completely independent on stage because every experiment with deaf dancers that were done until that time, there were attempts to cue deaf dancers with lights and electric shocks and flows that were vibrating and it made perfect sense. One time

Sharon and Deborah were commissioned to do work for the deaf dance company here and there were two very different experiences. I remember Deborah said that their commitment to enter the room and to enter material was so immense, was so incredible. To me looking at Muskhan's work and the way he works, there is that commitment because when he goes and prepare for work nothing is there. There is this incredible complete full commitment to enter that room and concentrate on the work and that was the way those people work. You couldn't relate to the disability because through that disability used in positive ways the commitment to enter the material was there and it was very very similar in the way I've seen more. Nancy Vreeland-Dalva finds that Kunningham and his audience

use music in unorthodox ways. Occasionally you see people wearing walkmans, Sony Walkmans, they're listening to something else. They're also always especially in the New York seasons. About two or three rows of the orchestra filled with musicians who are there paying attention to this enormously wonderful and riveting concert to which the dance is an interesting side ad junk. They're having a reverse of my experience. I use the music a different way and this does not pay any great tribute to the music and it certainly shows you that I am not as knowledgeable about music as I should be but for me when I see Kunningham the music functions almost exactly like this. It's like driving in the fog. You have to peer harder at the road because the fog is obscuring your vision so it focuses your concentration. I find having all that sound helps me focus on the dance. I look through the sound to the dance. I also get specific energy from the

dad from the music when it's percussive and when it has a specific rhythm and specific mood so it affects my emotional well-being to some extent but it also especially when it's that kind of electronic flak flak flak buzz bip. It makes me concentrate when it's not there I don't see as much. Nancy Vreeland-Dalba, Sally Baines, Deborah Hay, and Yakov's Shereer were participants in a symposium sponsored by the Division of Dance Department of Drama at the University of Texas at Austin entitled Merce Kunningham, Critical Perspectives. The views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin or this station. Technical producer for Forum, David Alvarez, Production Assistant Christine Drawer, I'm your producer and host Olive Graham. Kassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing

Forum Kassette's Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. That's Forum Kassette's Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. Dance is independent. It can, as it were, stand on its own feet. So, therefore,

music can accompany dance, but it is not a part of a dance that Kunningham makes. This week on Forum, an examination of Merce Kunningham, preeminent modern dancer.