Carrie Noland
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226541105
- eISBN:
- 9780226541389
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226541389.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
In this book, I treat what I believe to be Cunningham’s greatest preoccupation: not chance but rather inevitability, not chilling neutrality but rather the heat of human bonds. Instead of focusing ...
More
In this book, I treat what I believe to be Cunningham’s greatest preoccupation: not chance but rather inevitability, not chilling neutrality but rather the heat of human bonds. Instead of focusing solely on “the movement itself,” Cunningham in fact explored the way movements evoke intimate relationships and dramatic plots. By privileging this side of Cunningham—which has never been systematically examined—I go against the grain of the critical literature on his dances, a critical literature that has repeatedly compared his aesthetics to those of John Cage. While others have championed (or lamented) his posthumanism, his aesthetics of "indifference," his abstraction of the corporeal, and his refusal of meaning, I argue that his dances contain a plethora of moments in which archetypal human dramas are staged, desire and interest are multiplied, the human body is highly particularized, and gestures are saturated with meaning and affect. Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary will change the way we look at Cunningham's dances as well as the nature of his collaborations with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolyn Brown, and other members of his company.Less
In this book, I treat what I believe to be Cunningham’s greatest preoccupation: not chance but rather inevitability, not chilling neutrality but rather the heat of human bonds. Instead of focusing solely on “the movement itself,” Cunningham in fact explored the way movements evoke intimate relationships and dramatic plots. By privileging this side of Cunningham—which has never been systematically examined—I go against the grain of the critical literature on his dances, a critical literature that has repeatedly compared his aesthetics to those of John Cage. While others have championed (or lamented) his posthumanism, his aesthetics of "indifference," his abstraction of the corporeal, and his refusal of meaning, I argue that his dances contain a plethora of moments in which archetypal human dramas are staged, desire and interest are multiplied, the human body is highly particularized, and gestures are saturated with meaning and affect. Merce Cunningham: After the Arbitrary will change the way we look at Cunningham's dances as well as the nature of his collaborations with John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Carolyn Brown, and other members of his company.
