Dance Techniques 2010

176 Historical Context
Sabine Huschka
Historical Context
Time, Place, and
Socio-political Context
Similar to other modern dance techniques, the Cunningham
Technique was developed as an individual training
regiment with the goal of creating an aesthetic spectrum
of movement for the body. Created by Merce Cunningham
(1919–2009), the technique is based on a functional and
physiological understanding about the interplay between
joints and muscles, and on notions about subjecting divergent
positions of the limbs to changing tempos, rhythms,
and spatial directions. While training in tap, modern
dance, and ballet, as well as during his first engagement
with the Martha Graham Company (1939–1945), Cunningham
doggedly pursued questions about performing
radically different styles of movement. With his logical
and functional approach, Cunningham—despite ideological
and aesthetic barriers that typified American dance–
theater in the 1940s and 50s—wove the opposing principles
of modern dance and ballet into a movement complex.
The goal was, within a structured time–space continuum,
to establish a complex of coordinates between divergent
movements that could be physically explored.
The Cunningham Technique was, initially, created as a
personal exercise and training program, and used by Cunningham’s
dancers, as of the early 1950s, as a systematic
training format that should help them learn his choreographic
material. At Black Mountain College during the
1952 summer session, backed by his first influx of financial
support, Cunningham established the Merce Cunningham
Dance Company (MCDC)—with Carolyn Brown, Anita
Dencks, Viola Farber, Joanne Melsher, Marianne Preger,
Remy Charlip, and Paul Taylor. A pedagogical format was
developed within the context of his choreographic work. 1
Teaching the technique became increasingly important
for Cunningham in subsequent years in his studio in New
York (established in 1959), because, among other reasons,
it provided him with personal income.
The technique remains in a transformative state until
today; this being a process that happens from the inside–
out, and by which the technique
has become more
and more differentiated
with time. Principles and
exercise sequences emerged
from Cunningham’s choreographic
work, which,
determined by the aleatoric
composition process 2
(i.e., a composition process
based on chance operations
as practiced by the composer
John Cage and others),
confronted dancers
with technical challenges
that bordered on the impossible.
Cunningham’s
entire body of work was
influenced by innovations
in film, as film recording
techniques enabled Cunningham
to modify spatial–temporal concepts in respect
to the phenomenon of motion. In the early 1990s, Cunningham
began using DanceForms—a software program
using animation to generate choreography—as a supplement
to aleatorics. 3
Cunningham taught twice–weekly in his New York
studio until shortly before his death at the age of ninety.
Extracts from his technique classes, which can be seen at
www.merce.org, give insight into his teaching style and
1 Vincent Katz: Black Mountain College.
Cambridge / MA: MIT Press, 2002.
2 From the early 1950s, Cunningham choreographed
movement motifs, phrases, and
sequences, as well as the shape of his pieces,
using elaborate random processes. These
transformed the role of the choreographer
by employing a self–perpetuating and playful
logic. Chance operations overrode decision–
making and the personal taste of the
choreographer. This compositional process
treats movement as an abstract dimension
and confronts the body with the ‘impossible’.
For details, see Huschka 2000.