The Creative Innovation and Vast Influence of Merce Cunningham - Essay Example

The Creative Innovation and Vast Influence of Merce Cunningham I never had the pleasure of meeting Merce Cunningham in person, nor even catching a glimpse of the great man. In my attempts to get to know him better, I sought his videos in the internet and watched his interviews. If I was one who did not know his background, I would just see him as an old, shriveled, slow-speaking senior citizen dispensing wisdom on dance and life from his wheelchair and regaling his glory days when he had his share of the limelight as the star of the show. Yet, upon listening to his words, one can be enamored by his passion for the arts, notwithstanding his age and disability. In his advanced age, when most of his contemporaries are long dead or shoved in nursing homes rendering them useless to society, Cunningham remained vigilant in his post as guard of the dance, issuing instructions for his company of dancers as he envisions the dance in his still brilliant mind. He may sit immobile in his wheelchair, but his spirit and ideas joined the nubile movements of his dancers on the floor. That vision alone encapsulates how innovative and influential he was in the world of dance. This paper will explore how he came to be such. Travelling back in time to his origins as a young dancer, Merce Cunningham started training in all-round theatrical dance at the tender age of twelve under the supervision of Mrs. J.W. Barrett. He went on to further his studies at the Cornish School in Seattle, Washington and became a mentee of the eminent dance diva, Martha Graham. This grand dame had a great influence on the young Cunningham, as she prodded him to pursue professional dancing and choreography as a career. In 1944, he first collaborated with long-time art and life partner, John Cage in a dance concert where he choreographed his dances as the dance soloist to the original music composed and performed by John Cage. The resulting performance was something new for everyone to see and it elicited a gamut of reactions from all sectors. The resounding critique was made by Edwin Denby who noted that he had ‘never seen a first recital that combined such taste, such technical finish, such originality of dance material, and so sure a manner of presentation’ (Greskovic, 1999, p. 72). Indeed, Cunningham has lived up to that compliment all throughout his dance career. In 1953, Cunningham had his own company of 5 dancers, including himself. He preferred to maintain a small group that even in 1994, there were only 17 including the choreographer. His fortunate dancer-trainees eventually went on to develop their own careers as dancer-choreographers and made names for themselves. Some of these were Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Margaret Jenkins, Douglas Dunn, Gus Solomons, Jr., Karole Armitage and Ulysses Dove (Greskovic, 1999). The prominence these mentees of Cunningham gained was a reflection of his great influence in their dance philosophies. Cunningham’s dance innovations never ceased to amaze the audience. Asked if he was out to shock people with his dances, he claimed he was not, but was out to bring poetry in their lives. He brought a twist to ballet, which was so much part of the modern dance innovations but somehow put an edge to the classic dance. He combined what he learned from ballet such as the pronounced use of the legs, with the strong emphasis on the upper body in modern dance methods. Greskovic (1999) identifies one of Cunningham’s technical advancement in relation to ballet’s five positions of the feet that he referred to as the Five Positions of the Back – upright, curve, arch, twist and tilt. A meticulous artist, Cunningham did not stop at designing details of his choreography but also dabbled with the music that accompanied the dance. The unconventional sound elements used may be disturbing to the audience simply because it is unfamiliar and therefore, uncomfortable. Greskovic (1999) describes: Sounds came from nowhere predictable – sometimes electronic sound sources screeched and/or blared at high decibel levels, but it seems doubtful that the individuals put off by the works in which such sound effects occurred would find them much more agreeable had they some equally random, but more gently toned sonic base (p. 73). One of his productions, Oceans, made use of sounds from the ocean – dolphins, waves, etc. while the dancers moved like waters and creatures from the sea. It radiated the feel of the ocean that it seemed to the audience that they have been transported underwater (Aitchayess, 2009). Along with the unconventional use of sound as music is Cunningham’s chance procedures from spontaneous and unpredictable chance events. Examples of such chance events are tossed coins, fallen flowers, etc. and interpreted in dance. Critics have commented that too much stress on chance events leads audience to think of thoughts of randomness, ambivalence and shapelessness. However, it is the creative effort produced from such chance events that matter. In one of his dance classes, Cunningham was drawn to the sunset outside the window and he called on his dancers to observe the slow, deliberate movements of ships in the water with the sunset as the backdrop. This inspired him to create practice drills using slow, deliberate movements depicting the ships observed (MerceCunninghamDance, 2010). Greskovic (1999) chooses to lean on Denby’s original critique of Cunningham’s work as characterized by taste, technical finish, originality and sureness of manner. In Cunningham’s relentless pursuit of ways to innovate dance, in 1990, he began devising ideas for his choreography on a computer program called ‘Life Forms’. It was instrumental in helping him come up with original never-before-seen dance moves as the program included unusually dense, complex grouping moves and unfamiliar positions and combinations of these were conceptualized by a choreographer who knew the limits and possibilities of the human body. Putting heart and soul to his creations, it is a privilege to watch a Cunningham production because usually it only goes for a one-time-only performance at a time. Few are repeatedly seen in some dance productions. Cunningham comes up with ‘Events’, special productions to showcase compilations of his past works and the performances last up to about ninety minutes. His first Event was in 1964 in a non-theater space in a Vienna Museum, which is meaningfully so because his historical work deserves to be highlighted in a prestigious museum. Since then, he has had over 500 Events and in each one, a location that cannot accommodate a full-scale theatrical presentation is used with music, lighting and costume design improvised only for the transient location (Greskovic, 1999). Copeland (2002) likens Cunningham’s work to a collage, which appropriately was the title of one of his works. Copeland explains: It juxtaposed his usual modifications of ballet with utterly pedestrian movement (hair combing, nail filing) as well as steps drawn from ballroom and social dance. In other words, varieties of "found" movement existed alongside varieties of "found" sound. In order to understand the significance of this expanded field of movement possibilities, this side-by-side juxtaposition of the vernacular and the virtuosic, we need to examine the etymology -both linguistic and "art historical"- of the word "collage." (2002, p. 12). Cunningham is not restricted by rules in dance. He believes dance is an expression of oneself. He eloquently describes how dance should be in the following quote from one of the lectures in this course: If a dancer dances–which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance or remembering in his body someone else’s dance–but if the dancer dances, everything is there. . . Our ecstasy in dance comes from the possible gift of freedom, the exhilarating moment that this exposing of the bare energy can give us. What is meant is not license, but freedom. . .” Merce Cunningham (1952) Thus, although he is learned in the theories of dance and is widely exposed to the variety of the art form as demonstrated by his predecessors, he chooses to design his dance movements and sequences with a pure inspired creativity he so efficiently summons. He does not limit himself to the dance per se but incorporates other elements he thinks will more concretely express his ideas. Copeland (2002) contends that Cunningham’s work in collage tradition links together “disparate fragments of movement, the decentralized way the dancer's bodies are distributed throughout the performance space, even the spectator's choices about where and when to focus visual and auditory attention” (p. 13). All these have already played out in Cunningham’s mind in the creative process and the challenge was in the execution. Together with his collaborators, Cunningham successfully come up with disturbingly compelling performances by fusing totally unrelated elements and making them work together aesthetically. Steinberg (1972) commented that the performance sparks the mind and “seeing then becomes thinking” (p. 14). He added that even the gaps or physical, perceptual and psychological spaces between the unrelated fragments contribute to the resonating effect. Being a practitioner who is way ahead of his time, Cunningham’s innovation and influence spans the globe. His courage to experiment with novel ideas has attracted the attention of other experts in various art fields and have established a number of collaborations for various prominent works. One example is in one of his Event in 1982 where he danced in his Westbeth Studio in New York accompanied by electronic music played “live” in Texas by composer Jerry Hunt and transmitted over telephone lines. Cunningham has also worked with Nam June Paik’s global video linkups as he did performances together with artists on different parts of the world. Like any art form, meaning in Cunningham’s work is subject to the perception of his audience. Although he himself expresses his own ideas and emotions in his choreography, he does not impose it on his viewers. They derive their own personal meaning from watching it to suit their own lives. Cunningham’s influence has likewise reached the world of film with his longtime collaborator, Charles Atlas in 1974. Transcending dance performances from stage to film raised questions like those posed by Copeland (2002): What becomes of the integrity of "stage space" when the dancers are filmed exclusively in close-up? By contrast, how does the illusion of depth created by "deep focus" photography compare with the actual depth of a proscenium stage? When multiple cameras record the same movements from different perspectives, what sort of editing is required- what sort of "cutting on motion"' is necessary in order to preserve an illusion of rhythmic continuity? (2000, p. 20) Cunningham’s foray in the world of film further stirred his creative juices to think of ways to improve his craft to satisfy the visual hunger of his audience both on stage and on film. He and Atlas worked on ways to compromise technical gaps presented by film to still deliver the “live” experience of watching a performance. The experimented on movements and depth of the stage and juxtaposing images of dances against shifting, ever-changing backgrounds. In 1977, Cunningham and Atlas discovered a method for emphasizing the spatial separateness of individual bodies within the frame with the use of multiple monitors. Sharing the floor space with the eight performers were four video monitors whose images alternated between close-up details of the dancers already visible within the frame and images of dancers positioned just outside the frame of the viewfinder. The resulting sense of fluctuation between presence and absence, inside and outside, whole bodies and body fragments, was an especially striking example of the "resonance effect" peculiar to collage. (Copeland, 2002, pp. 20-21) Such artistic experimentation has left a legacy to future filmmakers. Atlas and Cunningham’s techniques have inspired many film and video artists to come up with more sophisticated methods which involve a variety of movement, whether they are dance movements or action scenes. What is impressive about Cunningham is his attention to detail and the implications each detail may have on the whole production. With regards to the use of space, he has successfully crafted visual effects that make the audience look hard and think hard. Copeland (2002) reports: Onstage, Cunningham's most compelling experiments with depth have less to do with "deep space" than with the actual, sculptural, three-dimensionality of the dancer. This is especially evident in a work like Pictures from 1984. Here, groups of dancers assemble themselves into complex, multibody, sculptural formations that tease the eye of the viewer in conflicting ways: One can trace the outline of the group architecture or one can just as easily focus on the "negative space" within (or behind?) the external outline (p. 25). Another striking thing about Cunningham is his view of how the dance affects the dancer and vice versa. In his previous works with John Cage, he worked on the dance while Cage worked on the music separately, and somehow, they make it work together. Cunningham claims that in dance, “dancers are not pretending to be other than themselves. They are in a way realizing their identities through the act of dancing” (Merce Cunningham Rockfeller award, 2008). He also respects the dancer’s own expression. He would have an idea of how a dance move should be interpreted, but he looks at the dancer and leaves her space to interpret it the way that it would work for her. Cunningham believes that in doing dance, one finds out something else about it that one never thought of before and he always looks forward to what that could be in each circumstance (Aichayess, 2009). Cunningham’s influence has been directly felt by the dancers, artists, choreographers at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) formed in 1953 at the Black Mountain College. They only have kind words for him reflecting the great and compassionate man he has been. Neil Greenberg, one of MCDC’s senior members, remembers distinctly how Cunningham described the dancer when he was one of the facilitators in one workshop Greenberg attended while he was a student. He explained that when a dancer must walk a tightrope, the other end is the step or choreography, and the other side is who the dancer is, the “walk” is everything that makes the dancer a unique individual. Another of MCDC’s members, one of Cunningham’s contemporary partners in dance, Valda Setterfield, thought very highly of Cunningham as a brilliant performer. She described him as committed to every single move, a glorious dancer. One time, he had an injury and they could not rehearse and she told him, “Well, passion won’t get us through it”. To that, Cunningham responded, “My dear, lets hope your passion and my passion can connect in some fashion.” This shows the witty and humorous side of Cunningham. Cunningham’s extensive body of work include the choreography for Un jour ou deux for the Ballet of the Paris Opéra, with music by John Cage and design by Jasper Johns, numerous work performed by his company, the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, White Oak Dance Project, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Zurich Ballet, and Rambert Dance Company (London), among others. His passion for the arts extended to new media leading to the creation of Mondays with Merce, a webcast series chronicling Cunningham’s teaching methods in his own dance company, complete with videos of advance technique classes, company rehearsals, archival footages and interviews with current and former company members, choreographers and collaborators, all of whom have been impacted one way or another by Cunningham’s life and works. Cunningham peacefully passed away in 2009, leaving behind a great legacy in dance. He has devoted his whole life to the art form and have dedicated much time and effort in improving the craft with his innovations. His enormous passion has rubbed on the people around him and his collaborators have continued on with the work Cunningham has began and developed with them. Going back to my impressions of the old, graying and humbled man whose memory has been forever captured on photos, film and internet videos, I now not only see an old man but an icon. His gift for dance and his creativity have been his investment for a lifelong legacy of innovation and influence in dance. He has indeed reaped a worthy interest from such investment, as his prominence in the dance arts have gained him recognition and honour as he is a recipient of numerous awards. More than that, he serves as an inspiration to those who aspire for excellence in their craft. Refernces Aichayess (2009) Merce Cunningham Ocean, Minnesota, 2009, Retrieved on April 8, 2011 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aBJdHnv5tM Copeland, R. (2002) Merce Cunningham and the Aesthetic of Collage. The Drama Review, Vol. 46, (T 173) Greskovic, R. in Bremser, M.(ed.) (1999) Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Routledge. Hummingbird Films (2008), Merce Cunningham Rockefeller Award, 2008. Retrieved on April 8, 2011 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXp7r96UTQ4 MerceCunninghamDance (2010) Mondays with Merce – The Demo. Retrived on April 8, 2011 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2xidtho7g Steinberg, L. (1972) Other Criteria. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More