Merce Cunningham

has a profound influence on modern dance
developed 'choreography by chance'
1. a technique where isolated movements are selected to create a sequence using random methods such as tossing a coin
  1. his works may have a score, but it's made separately from the choreography; the same can go for the set
  2. he has applied the uncertainty principle to works he called "events". For these performances, he shuffles together existing choreography from different works in his repertory, and plays them out to a different score
made a lot of collaborations
1. collaboration with John Cage- explored a new approach to the relationship between dance and music which co-existed within their pieces, but were not directly coordinated or matched in time and were created independently of each other
  1. "Independence between dance and music"
2. innovative lighting, sets, and costumes in collaboration with Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns
formed the Merce Cunningham Company in 1953
began dancing professionally with the Martha Graham Dance Company, in which he admired and learned from, but wasn’t convinced by certain aspects of her work—particularly the idea that every movement in a dance had to have a “meaning.”
1. ejected psychological and dramatic content from his work
2. for him, dance was about people moving; it has no necessary connection with music, or with stories, or with feelings
his choreography emphasis on line and shape
"The dancers are not pretending to be other than themselves … They are, rather than being someone, doing something."
his technique evolved from his experience and desire to combine use of the legs in ballet, with the use of the upper body in modern dance
1. he used the five positions of the back: upright, curve, arch, twist and tilt

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Merce Cunningham

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	Created by bethany.hamlin over 10 years ago