Merce Cunningham

The Modernizing of Modern Dance

Roger Copeland

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Paperback

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English

Routledge
16 December 2003

Dance; Contemporary dance; Biography: general; Cultural studies

"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 (Jaspar 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."

By: Roger Copeland
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 680g
ISBN: 9780415965750
ISBN 10: 0415965756
Pages: 328
Publication Date: 16 December 2003
Audience: College/higher education , General/trade , College/higher education , Primary , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 From Graham to Cunningham: An Unsentimental Education 2 Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man 3 Beyond the Ethos of Abstract Expressionism 4 The Limitations of Instinct 5 Contemporary Classicism: Re-Discovering Ballet 6 Primitive Mysteries 7 The Sound of Perceptual Freedom 8 Cunningham, Cage, and Collage 9 Dancing for the Digital Age 10 Re-Thinking the Thinking Body: The Gaze of Upright Posture 11 Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Cunningham 12 Fatal Abstraction: Merce Cunningham and The Politics of Perception 13 Dancing in the Aftermath of 9/11 Index

Roger Copeland is Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College. He is coeditor of the widely used anthology What is Dance? His essays about dance, theater, and film have appeared in The New York Times, The NewRepublic, The Village Voice, and many other publications including The Encyclopedia of Dance and Ballet.

Reviews for Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance

"""Copeland's book about the sixty-year career of Merce Cunningham is also a brilliant sixty-year history of theater, dance, art, music and intellectual movements in America. . . ."" -- Sally Sommer, Professor of American Dance Studies at Florida State University. ""Examines the trajectory of Merce The Choreographer and places him just where I think he belongs--as a global artist of the twentieth century moving in all directions into the twenty-first."" -- Valda Setterfield, Member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 1964-1974 ""Copeland's book will bring joy to Cunningham partisans."" -- Allan Ulrich, Dance Magazine"