Postmodern Dance Postmodern Architecture Postmodernism

88 A HUMANIST VIEW OF THEATRE ZELDA FICHANDLER DISSIDENT GOES WITHOUT SAYING MICHEL VINAVER 100 115 BOOKS AND COMPANY Cover: A Bunraku puppet-doll Photo: Courtesy of Japan Society Publication of Performing Arts Journal has been made possible in part by public funds received from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the New York State Council on the Arts. CORRECTIONS TO PAJ 19 The cover photograph was incorrectly credited. The photograph was taken by Roe Dibona. In The Play of Misreading by Gerald Rabkin, page 47, line 13, the section should read: "While I am attracted to its rigor, intelligence and omniverous energy, I am repelled by its willful opacity, virtuoso grandstanding, and quasi-mystical divorce from the concrete. I remain unconvinced that radical ideas can only be expressed within a radical rhetoric." In Postmodern Dance/Postmodern ArchitecturelPostmodernism by Roger Copeland, page 40, line 20, the sentence should read: "So ironically, the sort of current choreography that many dance critics are tempted to call post-postmodern would make the postmodern architect feel right at home." 3 Postmodern Dance Postmodern Architecture Postmodernism Roger Copeland The term modern dance is obviously an inadequate one. It is not synonymous with contemporary dance, for it is by no means that inclusive . It is only of temporary accuracy in so far as it is accurate at all, for tomorrow, when a more advanced type of dance shall have arisen, it will be impossible to refer to the dancing of today as modern. -John Martin, The Modern Dance, 1933 The term "postmodern" has been drifting in and out of critical discourse for well over a decade now, but it is only during the past three years that this cumbersome, unfelicitous phrase has made a big journalistic splash. The reasons for this have, I suspect, more to do with journalistic convenience than with aesthetic or linguistic necessity. For with the arrival of 1980, it was again time to play that familiar game of cultural prognostication called pin the label on the decade; and for better or for worse, the 1980s are rapidly becoming known as the decade of postmodernism. Be that as it may, there are only two arts-dance and architecture-in which the term can be said to serve an unambiguously necessary function. That's because both of these arts possess a clearly defined tradition of "the modern" (in this case, modern dance and modern architecture) as well as a comparably coherent and easily identified body of work which defines 27 itself in opposition to "the modern." By suggesting this, I don't mean to imply that the phrase "postmodern" has no meaning outside the realms of dance and architecture. Hardly. Its current omnipresence testifies to the pervasive conviction that an entire epoch-that of "modernism," broadly defined-has run its course. But in the other arts, the reaction against modernism hasn't manifested itself in so decisive and cohesive a manner. More importantly, the terms "postmodern dance" and "postmodern architecture " arose independently in the early 1970s, long before the phrase itself became journalistically fashionable. Unfortunately, problems arise the moment one attempts to find some common ground between postmodern dance and postmodern architecture. To an architect, the term postmodern connotes a rejection of the very sort of austerity and reductivism that characterized so many early postmodern dances. In fact, Yvonne Rainer's manifesto of renunciation ("No to spectacle no to virtuosity no to ... magic and make-believe," etc.) sounds very much like the holier-than-thou puritanism of the orthodox modern architects (against whom the postmodern architects rebelled). As long as both terms serve a useful function in their respective art forms, why insist on-or even look for-some sort of ideological uniformity? That's a reasonable enough question, but there are a number of compelling reasons for seeking out similarities between the two movements. To begin with the architectural meaning of the term, postmodern is rapidly becoming accepted as the model for postmodernism generally. This means that the dance community is likely to find itself-as it so often does-a minority of one in matters of terminology.' Furthermore, comparisons between postmodern dance and postmodern architecture are not as...