Merce Cunningham: Dance at the Edge

[Sparhawk]

With his life partner, experimental composer John Cage, he came up with a way to incorporate chance into the creative process.
He would use the Chinese method of divination, the I Ching, to
decide the order in which dancers should make certain steps.

"Things come up that one could say were physically impossible,"
Cunningham says, "but I always try them and in the act of doing, I
find out something I didn’t know."

For instance, Cunningham says, take three movements, a run, a
jump and a fall. Tossing a coin would tell you what movement to do
first. Such random choreography breaks down a dancer's muscle
memory of what steps normally follow other steps.

 

[hollis]

nice.

the Judson movement, (Lucinda Childs, Steve Paxton, Robert Dunn) answered Cunningham, as Cunningham answered the NYCB (Balanchine and his perfect compositions), perhaps. Ballet was the dance of the court, the ritual, the symmetry of the court and hierarchy, and YiJing is the movement to the ruler, so perhaps there is a real relation here that is not so random.


something the internet will never have, the body. dance. what a loss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_dance

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07EEDA1139F93BA25757C0A964948260

 

[denis_m]

Hello Sparhawk, Rosada and Hollis,

You may be interested in my essay on dance motifs in the received hexagram sequence at:
www.appositive.net/oysterbay/iching/qiankundance.pdf
www.appositive.net/oysterbay/iching/qiankunfigone.pdf
www.appositive.net/oysterbay/iching/qiankunfigtwo.pdf

Denis Mair

 

[Sparhawk]

That's really cool, Denis! Thanks.

L