Features
„They used to throw tomatoes at Merce Cunningham...
...Now he's the grand old man of dance — and leaping ahead in the computer age“ says Debra Craine in „The Times“ on the occasion of the 50 years anniversary season in 2002/03 of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. And she continues: „to meet Merce Cunningham is to encounter a contradiction. If you didn’t know better, you might dismiss him as a frail, benign octogenarian who leads a quiet life and draws birds in his spare time. If you did know better, you might be wary of confronting one of the most radical and wilful choreographers the world has ever known. Brilliant, crazy, provocative, a fraud: Cunningham has been called all these things in his time. But today, at 83, he is the undisputed grand old man of modern dance.“ Since July 2002 the choreographer and his company tour Europe and the US presenting seminal works like „Suite for Five“ (1956) or „Rainforest“ (1968) and new work plus film screenings and lectures.
Movement itself is the principal subject matter of Cunningham‘s choreographies: neither narrative nor musical form determines the structure of the pieces. His collaboration with the composer John Cage began with the choreographer‘s first independent production, in 1942, and lasted until Cage's death fifty years later. In the course of their work together they proposed a number of radical innovations. The most famous, and controversial, of these concerned the relationship of dance and music. In the early dances, dance and music shared an agreed time structure, coming together at certain key points but otherwise pursuing independent paths. As time went on, even those key points disappeared, and the relationship became still freer. The independence is now total – famously, the dancers in Cunningham's company learn and rehearse a work in silence and often do not hear the music until the first performance, or at any rate the dress rehearsal.
Asked if he felt that the world had finally come round to his way of thinking, Cunningham answered: “Yes, I do. It isn’t just because they’ve come to see me, because they didn’t. But things in their lives have changed which somehow work with some of these ideas I have pursued. They see television now with four or five things going on at once. When I did that on stage they said, ‘What are you doing?’ Now it’s part of their lives.” („The Times“)
Since 1991 Cunningham is using a computer programme, LifeForms, as a tool for choreographing. LifeForms gives the choreographer a humanlike figure made of wires; with this he can construct movement "in ways one would not have thought possible.“ In the latest work, „Fluid Canvas“, he uses material from a motion-capture session of his own choreographed hand movements. The company will celebrate the anniversary with performances and events in 2003 in New York, Los Angeles, Creteil (France) a.o.
For more information on Merce Cunningham, his work and his company go to:
http://www.merce.org
http://www.londondance.com/Content.asp?level=3&SubSection=935
Movement itself is the principal subject matter of Cunningham‘s choreographies: neither narrative nor musical form determines the structure of the pieces. His collaboration with the composer John Cage began with the choreographer‘s first independent production, in 1942, and lasted until Cage's death fifty years later. In the course of their work together they proposed a number of radical innovations. The most famous, and controversial, of these concerned the relationship of dance and music. In the early dances, dance and music shared an agreed time structure, coming together at certain key points but otherwise pursuing independent paths. As time went on, even those key points disappeared, and the relationship became still freer. The independence is now total – famously, the dancers in Cunningham's company learn and rehearse a work in silence and often do not hear the music until the first performance, or at any rate the dress rehearsal.
Asked if he felt that the world had finally come round to his way of thinking, Cunningham answered: “Yes, I do. It isn’t just because they’ve come to see me, because they didn’t. But things in their lives have changed which somehow work with some of these ideas I have pursued. They see television now with four or five things going on at once. When I did that on stage they said, ‘What are you doing?’ Now it’s part of their lives.” („The Times“)
Since 1991 Cunningham is using a computer programme, LifeForms, as a tool for choreographing. LifeForms gives the choreographer a humanlike figure made of wires; with this he can construct movement "in ways one would not have thought possible.“ In the latest work, „Fluid Canvas“, he uses material from a motion-capture session of his own choreographed hand movements. The company will celebrate the anniversary with performances and events in 2003 in New York, Los Angeles, Creteil (France) a.o.
For more information on Merce Cunningham, his work and his company go to:
http://www.merce.org
http://www.londondance.com/Content.asp?level=3&SubSection=935