A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945-1960 (review)

In A Game for Dancers Gay Morris adeptly bridges territories staked by scholars of dance studies and dance history in her study of dance modernism in New York City from 1945 to 1960. Morris's project takes a much needed disciplinary step: since the 1980s, while some dance and performance studies projects engaged theories from a myriad of disciplines and applied them to cherry-picked examples from dance's history, others excavated new information to find buried narratives in areas such as African American, Jewish, and political dance. In A Game for Dancers Morris achieves both objectives. Citing sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as the book's theoretical driver, Morris examines a myriad of choreographers and institutions over time, drawing on an array of theoreticians and historians. As noted by Lynn Garafola and Thomas De-Frantz in "blurbs" for the volume, A Game for Dancers offers the first comprehensive introduction to postwar modernism in dance. The text becomes vital to dance scholarship and ideal for university students. Morris sets the stage for future projects that synthesize earlier scholarship—and revisits old archives to correct myths perpetuated by cycles of citations. A Game for Dancers is a vital contribution to the literature of the field.

A Game for Dancers presents the paradoxes of mid-century modernism in dance: reaction against old forms versus unconstrained innovation, freedom versus resistance, a reliance on narrative forms versus a dedication to abstraction, "universalism" versus specificity, the desire to be avant-garde versus the need to institutionalize for survival. These conjunctions are placed in the framework of politics and the market. The "rules of the game" included "modernist rules," an oxymoron that was further confounded by institutions of power that solidified over time (204). Modernism meets "objectivism" in the work of modernist Hanya Holm progeny Alwin Nikolais's "decentralized movement" and Martha Graham progeny Merce Cunningham's "controlled accidents" (203). As the objectivists rebelled against the modernist rules established by their dance parents, Nikolais and Cunningham fulfilled modernism's tenet of rebellion while also engaging mainstream markets established by the modernists themselves. In titling the book A Game for Dancers, Morris accesses the twists and turns of these intertwined relationships of theory, art, and politics in an era that relied on mathematical constructs of "game theory" to predict behavioral and social outcomes. Game theory was initially developed to analyze competitions in which one individual does better at another's expense, yet Morris argues against dance as a "zero sum game." She concludes that the modernist genres were both contradictory and powerful, and that the choreographers created potent, enduring works in the face of paradoxical canons and political, economic, and social oppressions.

In the opening two chapters, Morris's imaginative use of sources, theory, and history intersect to challenge the canon with discussions within a single book about ballet, modern dance, and the work of its founders' progeny. The first chapter connects dance to "ideas that were circulating in the broader intellectual field," including the relationship of high art to mass culture in the work of Clement Greenberg, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, and the intersection of art with governments and nationalism (xxvii, 3–4). Morris outlines the paradox of "modernisms" in dance that began with tenets of rebellion but finally demanded conformity, forcing "second-generation" choreographers to work at "cross-purposes" with themselves (205n4, 88, 18). Unfortunately, by footnoting the definition of "modernism/s," Morris misses an opportunity to flesh out definitions for the terms "modern dance," "historic modern dance," "modernist," "modernism," and "modernity" that would be invaluable for the scholarly community. Yet the postwar progression of dance demonstrated by her overview remains a vital contribution to the field.

The second chapter re-opens the door to scholarship that challenges divisions between ballet and modern dance by exploring modernism in ballet. Here the review of the work becomes complex: Morris provides examples that demonstrate her...