Post Modern Dance Movement

After I saw Alijah’s essay on John Cage, I scrapped my original idea and decided to write an essay on one of my favorite choreographers, a constant collaborator with Cage, Merce Cunningham.

Merce Cunningham set the stage for post modern dance and choreography with something he called Chance Operations. The idea is that choreography, music, architecture (set), costume, etc. should be performed simultaneously, but they should be created separately from each other. Most choreographers find a music selection they like and choreograph with the music. Cunningham, instead, would choreograph an entire piece and add music later that, say, Cage composed separately. Cunningham also enjoyed working with alternatives to music (as is seen in this video). He would often have his performers dancing to talking or machine sound effects or even silence!

Merce Cunningham, sometimes, didn't even need people to choreograph dances! He used a computer program called DanceForms. This allowed him to manipulate his dances in private before revealing the finished piece to them at rehearsal.

My favorite part of Cunningham’s Chance Operations is ‘moves from a hat’. Merce Cunningham would literally write down several isolated dance moves (ex. Head roll, arabesque, pique, jette, etc) and place them in a bag or hat. He would then draw one move at a time to create a sequence for his performer. Usually it worked. The worst that happened is he would have to revise the dance.

This unusual style of dance is classified under the Post Modern Dance Movement. While it is very obvious that the performers in this video are ‘dancing’ and we are assured that this dance requires talent to perform, how much of the Post Modern Dance Movement can actually be considered dance? Many post modern choreographers will tell you that any form of movement is a form of dance. If you can find a beat or rhythm to your movements, then you are dancing! According to this, I am dancing even as I type this essay because I am typing in rhythm (albeit an uneven one) and one could even say that there is an artistic flow as my fingers flit across the keyboard. As you sit reading this essay, you too are dancing in your own way. Can we really expand dancing so far as to say simply moving is dancing? The argument for this idea asks one to define dance. An artistic form of non-verbal communication that relays some sort of emotion or idea. Where does that require any talent? In that sense, any movement with an emotion or idea behind it is, indeed dance.

But, now we must ask, is it art? I like to think that art requires a certain superiority, an idea that not everyone can create art. Anyone can play the violin. Not everyone can create art with a violin (poor violin playing is my own personal Hell). Where do the masses and the golden few meet? Is art inherent or learned? These questions, I suppose will be answered in full in class, but let me conclude this “bajumble” of ideas by suggesting that, yes movement is dance. And yes, anyone can dance. No, not everyone can dance artistically.