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  • Four Key Discoveries:Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Fifty
  • Carolyn Brown (bio), Merce Cunningham (bio), Laura Kuhn (bio), Joseph V. Melillo (bio), Thecla Schiphorst (bio), and David Vaughan (bio)

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Figure 1.

Carolyn Brown,
Laura Kuhn, and Merce Cunningham. Photo: Elena Olivo

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The following discussion was held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on October 18, 2003. The panel, moderated by Joseph V. Melillo and organized by BAM's Education and Humanities department, was held to observe the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's fiftieth season and the world premiere of Fluid Canvas and Split Sides, performances created in collaboration with the rock groups Radiohead and Sigur Rós. Cunningham also incorporated new computerized choreography software into the chance-based performance.

JOSEPH V. MELILLO In Merce Cunningham's own words, "there have been four events that have led to large discoveries in my work." Today, at the company's fifty-year milestone, we have assembled a distinguished panel of artistic collaborators, critics, historians, and dancers to consider the past and present evolution of these Cunningham discoveries.

This discussion is titled "Four Key Discoveries" because Merce once said that the company's work can be considered through the prism of these ideas: (1) the separation of music and dance as influenced by John Cage; (2) the use of chance operations in choreography; (3) the possibilities of film and video; and (4) experimentation with computer technology. Merce, would you give us your point of view about this statement?

MERCE CUNNINGHAM Yes. First, the music: John Cage didn't like the idea of one art supporting another or one art depending on another. He liked the idea of independence and wondered if there were another way we could work separately to produce a work of music and dance. The first things we made were short solos, and it was difficult for me to do, not having the music as support in the traditional way. But at the same time there was marvelous excitement in this way of working, so I pursued it. In one of those first solos, we had a given time structure within which the dance might take place—I think it was five minutes. I remember so clearly the first day when we were rehearsing with John and I made a large, strong movement—there was no sound but just about three seconds later came this ravishing sound, and it was very clear that this was a different way to act: not being dependent on the music but being equal to it. You could be free and precise at the same time. As we have continued to work this way with music and composers, it's always struck me how [End Page 105] precise the dances become on their own terms: it's both being free and at the same time working together.

The second discovery was chance operations. That began in the 1950s. A scientific institute called the Institute of Random Numbers had declared that using random numbers was just as useful as logic. The I Ching, the Chinese book of changes, had been published—that showed that chance was a way of working which opened up possibilities in dance that I might otherwise have thought impossible. I would try them, and sometimes they were impossible, but they always showed me something else that I hadn't thought of: ways of getting from one thing to another, kinds of rhythm, use of space. So I abandoned the idea of frontal staging focus; we could now face anyplace, any direction. One direction is equally as valid as any other. Split Sides, the piece we're doing here tonight, is a chance operation from the beginning. Every night we have the possibility of changing the order of music, set, costumes, and lighting design.

Tonight, before the curtain, we will cast the dice, first to see if it comes up odd or even: Even means we start the program with section A, odd means section B. A has come up now for three nights, but I can't tell you what this one will be and equally so with all the parts: which set...

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