Of the dancers who worked in the 1960s, Mercedes Cunningham stirred the most controversy with his works. Cunningham choreographs "by chance", holding to the idea that "any movement an follow any other movement". Regarded as avant-garde, he choreographs and performs works that audience's either adore or abhot, depending on their individual convictions. His admirers point to his fine artistic sense, his intelligence, his superb company as factors that make the works he creates brilliant movement pieces. Cunningham maintained a long artistic collaboration with composer John Cage (1912-1992), known for his philosophy that all sound should be regarded as music. Works produced under their collaboration created new artistic realms.
Alain Nikolais (1912-1993) was another American modern dance choreographer. His contribution was in the creation of a form of theatre hat includes props, costumes, films, slides, sound, and light as extensions of the bodies of the dancers. His visual effects and illusions often remind the audience of events in their own experience, yet the works contain no story or conventional plot. The dancers' bodies are often distorted or hidden in the costumes and props to emphasize Nikolais's abstract images and suggestions.
Another renowned choreographer is Anna Sokolow, whose powerful social statements characterize her works. Her commitment to the socialist movement, evident in her early works, gave way over time to a more general concern with the feelings and problems of all humanity. Somehow has used many different types of music, including jazz, and has choreographed extensively in Mexico and Isarel as well as in the US.
Black Choreographers
Many modern dancers have contributed to the development of modern dance as an art in America. Alvin Ailey's (1931-1989) great gift was his ability to present exciting, theatrical pieces that reflect the black experience. His first company was composed of all black dancers, but now his company is composed of dancers of all races who perform works by many choreographers. Ailey's present repertory company performs works that combine art and a unique vision of dance. The company is very popular and tours regularly.
Several other black dancers have significantly influenced modern dance. Donald McKayle is known for his use of dramatic tension and narrative to portray the black experience in his dances. One of his best-known works is Games, which is based on children playing in the city street. McKayle describes his work Rainbow Round My Shoulder as "based on chain gangs dreaming of freedom symbolized in the shape of a woman". His most recent work, for the Jose Limon Dance Company, Heartbeats, utilizes international song and dance to illuminate the human connections.
Gus Solomons and Garth Fagan are two other outstanding black choreographers. Solomons, who danced in the Merce Cunningham Company before starting his own company, is known for his use of architectural form in his choreography. Fagan uses a combination of strong modern-dance technique, the district qualities of African movement, and black culture to choreograph dances. These significant artists all bring their experience as blacks to their unique choreographic statements.
Other Choreographers of the 1960s and 1970s
Paul Taylor also has taken modern dance to new artistic levels. Taylor danced with Graham and Cunningham but has developed a style that is definitely his own. He is known for his choreographic wit, logical placings of movements, groupings of dancers, and satire. He has also created pieces that cleverly repeat a limited number of movements over and over again in unusual ways. He has not performed since 1974, but he till choreographs for his company extensively.
Bella Lewitzky is unique to the world of modern dance because she made her international reputation as an artist in California instead of New York. Not since Denishawn had a modern dance choreographer of major importance become established elsewhere than New York. Like Alvin Ailey, she was trained in California by Lester Horton. Her choreography is known for its powerful images and for extensive use of space, isolation, and quick movements. Lewitzky was always known for her extraordinary ability as a performing artist.
During the 1960s, modern dance reflected the social and political unrest that pervaded the decade. Many changes occurred. The only consistent characteristic was a discarding of the idea of theatricality for the use of everyday pedestrian movement. Some dancers and choreographers were saying no to the idea of modern dance as it then existed.
Many times, traditional leotards, tights, and theatrical costumes were discarded and replaced by utilization garments such as overalls and hard hats gym shorts and tennis shoes, sweat shirts and jeans- or even nudity. The 1960s and 1970s produced new names for modern dance, including antidance, nondance, minimal dance, environmental dance, dance without walls, verbal dance, and alternate space dance. Dance was sometimes performed in non-traditional spaces such as museums, malls parking lots, parks, streets, and country clubs. Such spaces change the way dance is performed, many times the dance is directed and choreographed by a dancer but performed by dancers and nondancers alike.
These periods of fertile creativity were characterized by a fresh look at time, space and sound. Much of the movement was antiproscenium theater, in which ordinary movement by ordinary people in ordinary places is considered valid art. Many dancers collaborated on an equal basis with composers and studio artists to create pieces, or "events" as they were sometimes called. Before this generation of dancers, choreographers had given ideas to a composer or designer and then waited for the results. Now the collaboration often took place simultaneously, with all the artists contributing to the work.
As the decade The 1970s drew to a close, two distinct camps of modern dance existed. One camp became more and more technically oriented and produced dances that were more and more difficult to perform. Dances needed to study for periods of time with a choreographer in order to develop the style and technique needed to perform that choreographer's works. These choreographers followed more directly the established artists of the generation who had preceded them. They did not necessarily create in the same way that their teachers had, but they used many of the preceding generation's methods and ideas to create their own original works. Some of the artists involved with the more theatrically motivated modern dance of the 1970s were Murray Louis, Jennifer Mueller, Bill Evans, Cliff Neuter, Twyla Tharp, Lar Lubovitch, Gloria Newman, and Pilobolus.
The other camp because more and more antidance. Time, space, and energy were altered to make new forms, meanings, and nonmeanings in the modern dance. Most of these choreographers had also studied and worked with the preceding generation of choreographers, but they discarded many of that generation's ideas to do new, different, exciting things in dance. A few of the artists involved with this camp of modern dance in the 1970s were Don Redlich, Rudy Perez, Meredith Monk, Kei Takei, and Anna Halprin.
The Judson Group and the Grand Union Group were instrumental in expanding modern dance performance of include many of these new ideas. The Judson Group was a coalition of choreographers, dancers, and other artists who worked and performed from 1962 to 1968 in the Judson Church in New York City. This collective was composed of a diversity of artists who interacted and created new ideas about a new kind of modern dance. The Judson was followed by the Grand Union from 1970 to 1976. Several of the artists belonged to both groups. Some ideas produced were the inclusion of improvisation within the performance of a dance piece, 'marking' or walking through rehearsal and presented this concept as legitimate performance, ever-developing dance pieces that would change with each performance, and the alteration of the order of sections of completed dance works each time they were performed. These and other concepts were important in the expansion of the concepts of modern dance. Some of the most important contributors to these movements were Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Douglas Dunn, and David Gordon.
In California, Anna Halprin has been redefining modern dance since the late 1950s. Her contribution to the ever-changing and evolving nature of modern dance as influenced many dancers and artists. Her current work in AIDS and with cancer patients is an extension and evolution of her earlier work in improvisation and process. This work has set her apart as one of the major innovators in modern dance.
part 1- Must Known Figures
part 2- Succeeding Generation of Modern Dance (you are here)
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