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Cunningham's Story works, as these old masters do, then the public, which loves ballet, would have something to live by. Let us hope that someday our ballet will be given more consideration in Russia than it has been spared up to now. But for the time being- onward, innovators! For innovators are always the renascence. 10 Merce Cunningham's Story Story, a dance Merce Cunningham choreographed in 1963, signaled a new phase ofexperimentation for the man who had moved in the radical vanguard of modern dance at least since 1951, when he first used chance methods in his choreography. Through the use of chance - employing charts, coin-tossing, dice-throwing, and clues from the I Ching to select elements in a predetermined gamut of movements, body parts, or stage spaces - Cunningham had developed a technical style characterized by unexpected juxtapositions of actions. For Cunningham, chance had the salutary effect of loosening the choreographer's conscious control over the dance, a goal augmented by the well-known autonomy of his collaborative method with composers and designers. To a great extent, choreography by chance produced unexpected and unpremeditated results. However, the initial gamut of movement choices from which the chance combinations were made still came from Cunningham's personal inventions. Also, once the chance procedures were followed, the resulting movement combinations, phrasing, spacing, and other components would then be set in an unchanging choreographic pattern. With Story, Cunningham introduced two elements that would further minimize his own control in the dance, by transferring choice from the choreographer to the dancers: spontaneous determination and improvisation . The choreographic structure allowed the dancers at points to make certain decisions regarding the given movements and in other sections to Society of Dance History Scholars, Tempe, Arizona, 1989. 103 104 The Euro-American Avant-Garde invent their own movements. But, for several reasons, Story was not a success. Hence it is useful to examine it precisely as a departure from Cunningham's usual methodology. Story is also notable for other reasons. It established the basic ad hoc structure for the flexible Events, which Cunningham began to present during the world tour of 1964. In Story for the first time, Cunningham decided just before each performance which sections of the dance would be performed, in what order, and for what durations, posting the instructions backstage. The ironic title, further, serves as a paradigm for Cunningham 's attitude toward the interpretation of his dances, since Story (obviously) implies that the dance will have a narrative structure, and yet, as with so many of his dances, Cunningham left any final exegesis up to the spectator. Story marked a transition in Cunningham's working relationship with Robert Rauschenberg, the painter who since 1954 had designed sets and costumes for the company. In 1961, that role had intensified, when Rauschenberg became the lighting director and stage manager of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, traveling with the group on tour. Eventually, during versions of Story given on the company's world tour of 1964, Rauschenberg began to create "live decor." Inscribing his own and his assistant Alex Hay's performances in the decor ofthe dance was a decision that had deep repercussions, since ultimately it led to his leaving the company, in 1965.1 Story was first performed at Royce Hall at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles, in July 1963. The company had recently undergone a change of personnel: Judith Dunn and Marilyn Wood had left, and Barbara Lloyd had recently joined. This necessitated a change in the repertory.2 The group spentJune and July in residency at UCLA, and Cunningham choreographed Story during that time. Seven dancers were in the first performance of the work: Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Shareen Blair, William Davis, Barbara (Dilley) Lloyd, and Steve Paxton. The dance was open-ended in terms of the number of performers; Cunningham writes that it was "a dance for x-number of people."3 In the nineteen performances of the dance in the United States, the number of dancers ranged from five to eight. For the performances in Europe and Asia during the world tour of 1964, the dancers for Story usually included the entire company: Cunningham, Brown, Farber, Blair (until she left the company during the tour), Davis, Deborah Hay, Lloyd, Sandra Neels, Paxton, and Albert Reid. Because the structure was so flexible, the duration of Story also ranged widely-from fifteen to forty minutes.4 Cunningham has written of Story: The title does not refer to any...

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