Chapter 10 Outline

• Dissenters who wanted to free themselves from the influence of the "Big Four" that eventually led to radically different dancing and choreography: Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Alwin Nikolais, Paul Taylor
• Merce Cunningham: experimentation with composer John Cage. Started at the Cornish School in Seattle, then went to NYC to join Graham. Graham's grounded-ness antithetical to his natural athleticism and love of jumping. Focused on the "facts of moving" rather than the meaning. Both influenced by Zen Buddhism. Based on I Ching, developed the concept of chance organization of dance and music. Believed that "music and dance, conceived separately and then juxtaposed, offered greater expressive freedom" (Reynolds 357). Concept of space abandoned traditional proscenium theatre--"multiplicity of centers"--"any place, occupied or not, [is] just as important as any other" (359). Cunningham dancers needed "special skills, particularly the mastery of isolations--body parts moving separately and sometimes in opposition to one another" (361). Other collaborators include artist Robert Rauschenberg, composer Christian Wolff, artist Jasper Johns, artist Andy Warhohl. In later years, he relied upon abbreviated ballet forms as a matter of legibility and convenience. Began using the computer (LifeForms) to create choreography when he became too arthritic to develop it on his own body.
  Major works include:
  Sixteen Dances for Soloist and Company of Three (1951-first chance dance)
  Theater Piece #1 (1952- score by Cage)
  Suite by Chance (1953)
  Antic Meet (1958-notable for its humor)
  Summerspace (1958-Rauschenberg pointillist set & costumes)
  Events (excerpts from other dances performed in unconventional spaces without intermission)
  Variations V (1965-dancers' movements activated slides, films and an electronic score using radio antennas)
  How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run (1965)
  RainForest (1968-set of mylar pillows by Andy Warhohl)
  Enter (1993-created on computer)
  Trackers (1991)
• Cunningham dancers who have gone on to successful solo careers or formed own companies include: Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Remy Charlip.
• Erick Hawkins: Also left Graham in 1950 to concentrate on own work. First male dancer in Graham's company in 1938. Influenced by "Duncan's belief in the religious nature of dancing and the 'pure vision' of the early years at Bennington, with its heady sense of an emerging American dance evolving from native ideas." Also influenced by Zen to create a system of movement "based on the the body's natural flow of energy, avoiding all extremes" (Reynolds 371). Built upon Mabel Ellsworth Todd's The Thinking Body to create Normative technique. "Hawkins found in Eastern philosophy an affirmation of the concept of wholness" with the integration of score, sets, props, costumes and movement. He insisted that music be composed for the work and performed live (372). "Hawkins created rituals designed to bring viewers into harmony with their own experience" (373). Collaborated with composer Lucia Dlugoszewski, designer/sculptor Ralph Dorazio, sculptor Ralph Lee and commissioned many contemporary composers.
  Major works include:
  Here and Now with Watchers (1957)
  Eight Clear Places (1960)
  Black Lake (1969--imagery from the night sky)
  Classic Kite Tails (orchestra piece 197?)
  Plains Daybreak (1979--based on American Indian myth)
• Alwin Nikolais: "His fusion of dance and spectacle, in which all elements, including sound accompaniment, were of his own design, captured the attention of a huge television audience in 1959" (Reynolds 374). Attended Bennington in summers of 1936-37 and Mills in 1938 to study with the "Big Four." Became Holm's teaching assistant, then became co-director of a modern dance program at Henry Street Playhouse in 1948 with a curriculum that included improvisation, composition, notation, percussion, pedagogy and a children's troupe. Decentralized technique was "a system of moving based on the ability to maintain a fluid center, as distinguished from the fixed placement of ballet and most other modern dance techniques" (375). Wanted to offer audiences something other than itself to identify with. Focused on light, sound, color, shapes and motion with dancers often obscured by costumes, props and/or slide projections. Appearance on The Tonight Show in 1959 brought modern dance to the masses and resulted in extensive touring enabling him to "reach a much larger and more diversified audience that any other avant-garde choreographer" (378).
  Major works include:
  Masks, Props and Mobiles (1953)
  Kaleidoscope (1955-first full evening length work)
  Tensile Involvement (elastic bands from wings)
  Sanctum (1964)
  Tent (1968)
• Nikolais dancers who have gone on to successful solo careers or formed own companies include: Murray Louis, Gladys Bailin, Phyllis Lamhut, Beverly Schmidt Blossom.
• Murray Louis: phenomenal dancer with unusual control of isolations and balance. Known for his comedic abilities. Derivative of Nikolais, but more interested in "unadorned dancing" (Reynolds 380).
  Major works include:
  Junk Dances (1964)
  Intersection (1969)
  Hoopla (1972)
• Paul Taylor: first introduced to dance in college and won a scholarship to Juilliard after a summer of study with the Graham, Humphrey, Limòn and Horst at the American Dance Festival in 1952. Invited to join both Graham and Limòn companies. Left Juilliard to work on Broadway and television commercials while continuing his training with Graham, Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske (Reynolds 381). Danced with Graham on and off from 1955 until 1962 while doing his own work. Taylor's "juxtaposition of the monstrous with the gentle" was described by critic Deborah Jowitt as "an inscrutable balance of wit, solemnity, tenderness and cruelty..." (382). Early work tried to explore if dance could be anything and garnered him 4 inches of blank space for a review by Louis Horst (383).
  Major works include:
  Three Epitaphs (1960-masked dancers with mirrors)
  Aureole (1962-plotless lyricism to Handel)
  Orbs (1966)
  Private Domain (1969)
  Big Bertha (1971)
  Esplanade (1975-after the end of his performing career)
  Airs (1978)
  Arden Court (1981)
  Company B (1991-created for the Houston Ballet)
• Several young choreographers of the 1950s influenced developments toward post-modernism. Katherine Litz began with Humphrey-Weidman and performed in many settings including musical theatre. Taylor described her as "a dancer of delight whose solos are delifcate flights of whimsy, a phantasmagoria dreamed up by an eternal ingenue" (Reynolds 389). James Waring and Remy Charlip were exceptions to the idea that ballet and modern did not mix. "Waring's choreographic approach, described as 'the creation of spontaneous inanities through the juxtaposition of the highly serious and the amusingly inappropriate,' soon attracted delighted attention among avant-gardists" (389). "Waring occasionally put modern as well as ballet dancers on pointe and enjoyed reducing ballet steps to the hand signals used to indicate movement in class" (390). Remy Charlip was "admired for the balance and subtlety of his usually small-scale works, which were predominantly mime and gesture (although Charlip possessed an exacting dance technique honed by years with Cunningham's company)" (390). His "mail order dances" were unusual in that he sent or gave sketches of figures in motion to dancers or dance companies and had them develop transitional movement to connect the images, combining chance with choice.