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FLUID DYNAMICS: Stanford dancers,
musicians and scientists are figuring out what
makes Cunningham (here, in 1957) tick.
Charles Rotkin/Corbis |
at the beginning of a
performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the
acclaimed choreographer walks onstage and tosses a pair
of dice to determine what music the audience will hear.
He rolls them again and again to decide on the costumes,
backdrop, lighting and sequence of dance segments for
the evening’s program.
It’s hard to think of another major 20th-century
artist—except for the company’s former music
director, the late John Cage—who has made uncertainty,
or what Cunningham calls “indeterminacy,”
so central to the creative process. His “chance
procedures” and his collaboration with other iconoclastic
luminaries such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns,
Andy Warhol and Buckminster Fuller earned Cunningham
a reputation as one of the most daring, influential
figures in American arts. He has also worked widely
in film and video and routinely employs computer software
in his choreography.
This year, Stanford Lively Arts is orchestrating an
unusual campuswide project focused on Cunningham’s
ideas and artistic expression. Director Lois Wagner
describes Encounter: Merce as “the first collaborative,
multidisciplinary exploration through the arts at Stanford.”
Numerous academic departments signed up to offer courses
and stage interdisciplinary performances based on the
choreographer’s principles. The Cantor Arts Center,
Stanford Humanities Center and Lane Medical Library
are holding complementary exhibits, film screenings
and other activities.
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Photo: Charles Rotkin/Corbis |
The two-quarter undertaking started in September and
moves into high gear in early March, when the 85-year-old
Cunningham arrives for a weeklong residency that includes
two performances by his celebrated dance company and
several other public events from March 8 to 12. His
troupe will perform Split Sides, a new work
commissioned jointly by Lively Arts, the Paris Opera
and the U.K.’s Dance Umbrella, with experimental
scores by rock bands Radiohead and Sigur Rós.
On March 12, a Presidential Lecture features Cunningham
in conversation with John Rockwell, arts and leisure
editor of the New York Times.
Nothing illustrates Cunningham’s multifaceted
appeal—and the goal of this project—better
than Ortho 222: Anatomy of Movement, an interdisciplinary
course geared to students in biological sciences, medicine,
mechanical engineering, computer science, anthropology,
and performing and visual arts. One topic option for
the course’s required project this winter quarter
is “What is the Essence of Merce Cunningham?”
Admittedly, the syllabus says, his work defies description
because “movement is unchained from music, particular
dance phrases are chosen by the laws of chance, and
boundaries of time and space are continually challenged.”
That said, students are expected to “objectify”
his style, compared to traditional dance, in scientific
terms “using 3-d kinematic and kinetic analysis.”
As expected, dance and music faculty eagerly found ways
to intertwine their course offerings with the Merce
project. Dance lecturer Diane Frank, a former instructor
with Cunningham’s studio in New York, is teaching
an intermediate/advanced class in Cunningham-based technique.
“The students rehearse without music and learn
to put movements together that don’t usually follow
one another,” Frank says. “The class will
be supplemented by some chance procedures experiences,
which give the dancers the opportunity to assemble work
in a fresh way.”
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Photo: Charles Rotkin/Corbis |
In music, Mark Applebaum is teaching a freshman seminar
on John Cage and an undergraduate composition seminar
in which students use chance procedures. Chris Chafe,
director of the Center for Computer Research in Music
and Acoustics (CCRMA), taught a Fundamentals of Composing
class last quarter, where students created electronic
versions of a John Cage composition written for instruments.
“This has been a galvanizing project for the students.
Some of them will hear their work in concert,”
he says.
Chafe refers to a happening to be hosted by the center,
which brings artists, scientists and technologists together
to investigate scientific and technological questions
and create technology-based art. Audience members will
wander among several geodesic-dome tents while listening
to the students’ compositions. “In the true
collaborative tradition of CCRMA, we’re getting
guidance from the [Cunningham] troupe and the John Cage
trust. Some things will be completely spontaneous and
some we will have worked out in advance,” Chafe
says. “The boundaries are blurred between the
audience and the performers. The usual roles change,
and there’s more chance interaction.”
In another cooperative effort, three alumni choreographers
are each creating 8- to 10-minute dances using chance
procedures without regard to musical accompaniment,
while music students are composing pieces of the same
length using different chance procedures. At a performance
titled Music and Dance by Chance, the resulting works
will be layered together for the first time. Cunningham
calls it “cohabitation.”
“Things are not coordinated,” Applebaum
explains, “they cohabit in a performance. You’ll
have some moments of linear connection, where it feels
like the performance was created by one mind. But most
of the time, you’ll have this very exciting coexistence
of disparate things, and the audience tries to navigate
and figure out the juxtaposition.” The idea of
an audience made up of active participants who process
the elements they’re presented with is key to
understanding Cunningham’s process, he adds.
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CUNNINGHAM: In 2005.
Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images |
Yet another “cohabitation” features the
Stanford Improvisational Collective musicians and Cunningham’s
company. After a 30-minute musical overture of John
Dorn’s “Cobra,” the dancers will perform
as Applebaum plays the mouseketier, an original electroacoustic
sound-sculpture made of junk, hardware and found objects.
He plays it with chopsticks, violin bows, windup toys
and his hands. He’ll be joined by students creating
short “sound events” in the spirit of John
Cage.
To be a part of a Cunningham-inspired collaboration,
Frank observes, is to push boundaries, leaving results
open to surprises as they unfold. “It’s
a very heightened, potent thing—wonderful for
young dancers and musicians to experience.”
Jeffrey Schnapp is director of the Stanford Humanities
Lab, which funds large-scale research projects demonstrating
a “new kind of convergence between the digital
and the humanities disciplines.” He sees SHL ’s
participation in the Cunningham events as an example
of synchronicity: researchers studying Buckminster Fuller
(whose massive archive rests at Stanford) can share
their findings, and learn more about Fuller through
Cunningham. The two taught at Black Mountain College’s
summer institute in the 1940s; SHL will host a panel
discussion about the progressive art school with Cunningham
participating.
Schnapp says the Cunningham project dovetails with what
is already taking place on campus. “Most universities
are rather conservative. Stanford is one of the more
fluid university environments, open to change and innovation.
It’s congenial to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary
collaboration.”
Chafe agrees. “From the planning to the process
itself, a project like this that takes us out of the
corners of our campus and brings us together is phenomenal.”
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