Authors: Roger Copeland, Copeland Roger
ISBN-13: 9780415965743, ISBN-10: 0415965748
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Date Published: October 2003
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Merce Cunningham and the Modernizing of Modern Dance is a complete study of the life and work of this seminal choreographer/dancer. More than just a biography, Copeland explores Cunningham's life story against a backdrop of an entire century of developments in American art. Copeland traces his own experience of Cunningham's dances-from the turbulent late '60s through the experimental works of the '80s and '90s-showing how Cunningham moved dance away from the highly emotional, subjective work of Martha Graham to a return to a new kind of classicism. This book places Cunningham in the forefront of an artistic revolution, a revolution that has its parallels in music (John Cage, and the minimalist composers who followed him), painting (Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg), theater (the "happenings" of the '60s), and dance itself (the Judson School of dancers). An iconclastic and highly readable analysis, this book will be enjoyed by all those interested in the development of the American arts in the 20th century.
Acknowledgments | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | From Graham to Cunningham: An Unsentimental Education | 25 |
2 | Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man | 53 |
3 | Beyond the Ethos of Abstract Expressionism | 69 |
4 | The Limitations of Instinct | 85 |
5 | Contemporary Classicism: Rediscovering Ballet | 97 |
6 | Primitive Mysteries | 121 |
7 | The Sound Of Perceptual Freedom | 145 |
8 | Cunningham, Cage, and Collage | 165 |
9 | Dancing for the Digital Age | 183 |
10 | Rethinking the Thinking Body: The Gaze of Upright Posture | 205 |
11 | Modernism, Postmodernism, and Cunningham | 229 |
12 | Fatal Abstraction: Merce Cunningham in the age of Identity Politics | 247 |
13 | Dancing in the Aftermath of 9/11 | 263 |
Bibliography | 287 | |
Index | 295 |