Merce Cunningham

See also: Cunningham

Merce Cunningham (of its true name Draper Philip Cunningham ) is a American Chorégraphe born the April 16th 1919 in Centralia (State of Washington), whose work contributed to the renewal of the thought of the Danse in the world.

To present choreographic work of Merce Cunnigham has this of private individual that it commits us speaking about a way of thinking, of a vision of the world more than of the personal history of an individual.

Merce Cunningham belongs to a whole artistic current which has affected the world of the visual arts, of the music and to a lesser extent that of the dance.

Merce Cunningham was dancer at Martha Graham when it started his choreographic course. Martha Graham was one of the great figures of what then was called the “modern dance”. The concept with work in the modern dance was that of the return at the origin, the return to the sources before civilization and its misdeeds. Martha Graham thought with the dance capacity to restore the contact with old, natural and mythical energies which sleep in us under the surface of the culture, from where its artistic exploitation of the old myths for example. The dance of Martha Graham exaltait of great feelings, of the values morals. It was a very emotional universe where one was going to seek at the bottom of oneself to express what would be hidden there. It was besides the time which was centered on this idea of the expression (see for example Jackson Pollock for painting).

It is thus in this context that Cunningham, pushed by the type-setter John Cage, will compose its first parts. He leaves the company of Graham in 1945 and creates his first solos.

In 1951, its part 16 dances for soloist and company of three will mark first time in another direction that of the return to ego major. It is that Cunningham uses the chance to compose this dance: it throws parts to determine the order of the sections of the dance. The use of the chance enables him to make esthetic decisions in an objective and impersonal way. One can say that this means of arriving at creation, not by intuition, instinct or personal taste, was a kind of point of no return in the choreographic design of Cunningham.

This idea to use the processes of chance to compose was initially implemented by the type-setter John Cage, fellow traveller of Cunningham until its death in 1992. The circle of artists revolving around Cage and Cunnignham was composed inter alia plastics technicians like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, type-setters like Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, to quote only them. All these artists were the people deeply anchored in their time. One could say that they are “urban” artists who do not turn the back on the impressions sound and visual emanating from the town life, nor with the technological innovations of their time.

Thus, as in the life, choreographies of Cunningham coexist the dance, the music, the plastic work, which, worked each one on their side, are superimposed the day of the spectacle in an open artistic meeting.

Why this use of the chance in these works? It is a means of surprising oneself, of going beyond its own ego, leaving its practices.

The goal of the dance of Cunningham is to give to see the movement and its organization in space and time. There is no direction hidden in choreographies of Cunningham and it is with each one to find its way in its work. Spectator is called to be active, since there is no direction which is given to him, it is free to see or hear what it wants, according to its own desire. One could say that the dance of Cunningham would be a dance of the intelligence in opposition to the dance of the emotion of the modern dance. It is an modest dance which holds the remote emotion. Free with each one to test pleasure with these plays of joining which are choreographies of Cunningham and its team.

Apart from the chance, it is the treatment of the time which is specific at Cunningham. It is not any more time of the music which one follows, measurement with measurement, but it is the time of the Chronomètre. The sequences of dance have such or such duration. Each cell has its own musical quality in its reports/ratios of the movements between them and with those of the others. The musical quality is internal with the movement and on that which dances it, it is not imposed outside.

The report/ratio with space is very specific also. It is not any more that of the prospect. Each dancer is his own center. Space is done and is demolished, is woven under the eyes of the spectators, free with them to choose what interests them rather than to fix the principal dancer at the center of the scene.

From the point of view of the technique of the movement, Cunningham uses the movements of the legs which are close to the traditional in their form, but the intention and the energy which animate them are in another register, the more so as are added movements of selected backs to it in a random way and which use it in all its possible directions: ahead, behind, on the sides, on the diagonals before and back…

Thus, to dance at Merce Cunningham requires a great mental availability, a control of its nonrigid body, it is necessary to have the always vigilant spirit to dance this dance. It is besides in that which it would be difficult to say that the dance of Cunningham is abstracted, because in fact well the body is used very far in its possibilities, including in its reports/ratios with the intelligence.

Cunningham was one of the first choreographers to adapt the use of the Caméra for Film er the dance, not like a witness of work, but like a visual object in oneself. It also contributed to the finalization of a software of writing of the movement, “Life forms”, which makes it possible to compose the dance by computer, which it is not deprived to do since the age does not enable him any more to dance. Thus, in 2005 it always creates choreographies by the means of data processing, proving thus that it always knew to adapt to its time and the circumstances.

One can find all the references complete of very many works of Merce Cunnigham in the work of David Vaughan: Fifty Years , edition Aperture.

Theory

It is with Merce Cunningham that start to pose the problems of the modern Danse. There is no more discussion thread, more inevitably of history. Quickly joined by John Cage, it will dig the movement and will upset the codes of the scene: all the points of space have the same value, why this binary relationship between the dance and the music, each dancer is a soloist, there are no more one chorus and only one soloist… It is with the hinge between the modern dance and the postmodern Danse and does not enter any of the two categories. One will make use of his work in the postmodern dance to set it in motion or to continue it, with the idea that any movement has an equal value. Merce Cunningham tries to demolish coordinations of the body and car randomly of the elements of the body and directions. It tries out unknown movements then. One is in 1948 with Untitled solo . It is a rather vertical dance which breaks up the movement on the strong axis of the column. It is more about the figure than of energy circulating in the body. The creative interest lies in the way which carries out of a figure to the other. This work on random the conduit to call upon data processing specialists and to create Lifeform , a software which creates and models in the shape of a small virtual character, random movements, in a random order. The problem of the fall followed by the jump summarizes well the difficulty of the implementation, and even these errors are accepted. In the same way, it makes separately work its team on the music, the costumes and the possible luminous decoration, and joins together the unit the day of the representation. Thus it breaks association dance-music and works over the durations. With Biped in 1999, it puts in scene for the first time the software Lifeform .

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