Merce Cunningham, The Modernizing of Modern Dance (review)

Copeland's book is, as the saying goes, 'long overdue', both in the sense that there is a need for – and a sad lack of – serious critical works on Cunningham, considered by many to be the world's greatest living choreographer – and in the sense that, as the author himself tells us at the start, this is a book which began embryonic life a quarter of a century ago. For those of us who have followed the emerging traces of that life, across the pages of diverse publications, it is a pleasure finally to hold the volume in our hands.

Despite being in book form, and with arguments now more fully developed, the style and tone of the writing here is recognisably that of Copeland's earlier articles, with a more episodic structure than is often found in monographs. He is no less openly polemical and provocative than hitherto, which enlivens his writing though it can also be problematic.

Copeland's approach is in many respects a welcome departure from established patterns. Fostered largely by Cunningham's own gnomic pronouncements, critics have largely taken to repeating his aphorisms, rather than examining the details of his work. By contrast, Copeland moves beyond superficiality, paying attention to detail in ways which are helpful both to specialists and to others. This is the case when he is dealing with movement description, with working methods, history, and with Cunningham's relation to artists working in other media. Copeland states at the outset that he thinks the nonspecialist reader will benefit from a view of Cunningham's choreography through 'the steady accumulation of precisely described moments from many different works – rather than relying on extended descriptions of a few particular dances' (21). His descriptions of such moments are not very numerous, but they are vivid, and use ballet vocabulary to evocative effect. When dealing with Cunningham's famous 'chance methods' (the use of devices such as dice or cards to make choreographic decisions more usually dictated by personal choice), rather than just paying lip service to the idea, Copeland traces the evolution of this method (p. 71), uses quotes from Cunningham to illustrate how it works in detail (pp. 74–5), and makes connections ranging from 'Suite by Chance' (1953), the first work where all of the variables of space and time were determined by chance procedures, through Cunningham's work with video and film, to his choreography with the computer programme 'LifeForms' (starting with 'Trackers' in 1991). He argues that the collage-like use of the body resulting from chance methods anticipated film and videotape editing procedures, and also the later concept of the 'technobody', where different parts are interchangeable. This leads to interesting observations on Cunningham's exploration of the relationship between the animate and the inanimate. Rather than reiterating the well-known affinities between Cunningham and the composer John Cage, Copeland makes the important point that 'the eradication of the distinction between 'music' and 'noise' has no exact equivalent in the vast majority of Cunningham's dances'(p. 161). He points out that the famous arbitrary relationships between the different elements of the performance (choreography, music, décor, lighting, costumes) are not in fact entirely arbitrary, being based on shared sensibilities. He also challenges claims concerning the influence of Zen Buddhism on Cunningham's choreography and the impact of television on his work. (The latter argument in particular is debatable.)

Another cliché of Cunningham criticism, his decentering of space, is situated here in the context of more traditional treatments of stage space and discussed in terms of Cunningham's use of a deep proscenium stage, like thatof the Paris Opera, and compared with camera techniques. Copeland alsodraws on painting to discuss the effects of innovative spatial techniques on the spectator's experience of time. Unusually for studies on Cunningham, his collaborators in other art forms, notably the painters Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, are discussed here in some detail, in terms of their own work and their aims. Their...