Interpreting the Aesthetics of Merce Cunningham - The Dancer and the Dance

In appearance, Merce Cunningham’s dance work seems to be synonymous with an anti-identity stance. His use of chance procedures is key to this position, as in subjecting the continuity of his work to chance procedures he is preventing himself from being the subject of the dance. (Fraleigh 2004a: 163) A philosophically sound proposition, when we consider that Georg Hegel states in his Phenomenology of Spirit that action makes an implicit ‘being’ or self explicit. (Hegel, 1978: 239)
However, the use of chance procedures does not eradicate all traces of ‘Merce Cunningham’ from the dance. It is only the continuity of the dance that Cunningham subjects to chance procedures (time, space, entrances, exits, number of dancers, repetitions and so on), the movement vocabulary is formulated by Cunningham in response to questions he has about movement. For instance, Torse (1976) is an exploration of ‘how to move very fast…move both the feet, the legs, at a rapid pace, both in the air and on the ground and so on, and also move the torso at the same time.’ (Jordan, 1987) Cunningham is therefore not ultimately passive in his choreography and the core of the dance - the movement - comes from Cunningham himself, his choices. Albeit not representative or expressive of Cunningham in the traditional sense of his modern dance peers, his choices and interests in movement make his identity present in the work, as he is acting (in the sense of action), and therefore in Hegelian terms making his ‘being’ or self explicit.
Cunningham’s anti-identity stance goes hand in hand with his rejection of the expressionism of his modern dance teachers and peers. Whereas Martha Graham wanted to ‘dance the heart of man’ (Fraleigh, 2004: 38), Cunningham moved away from the emotional content of his early dances (such as the fear driven Root of an Unfocus (1944) to what he deemed more clarity in movement; to Cunningham, expression makes movement harder to see. (Lesschaeve, 1985: 65) Plato dismisses art on a similar basis, that it is representation third removed from the ‘throne of truth’ (Plato, 2003: 339), i.e. from the perfect conception of a bed in the Realm of the Forms, to the bed in the world we experience everyday to the artists representation of a bed. Cunningham defies Plato’s criticism of art because his art is not attempting to be representative of life, it is just dancing and therefore can be said to be second removed from the ‘throne of truth’, and subsequently a more accurate representation of everyday life than art which intends to represent.
Cunningham does not dismiss expression entirely; on the contrary he just disregards intended expression because movement itself is inherently expressive. (Lesschaeve, 1985: 103) Maurice Merleau-Ponty makes a similar proposition in his Phenomenology of Perception; in a discussion of emotion he claims that we loose our reality in our feelings ‘as does the actor in the part he plays.’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1996: 380) When thought of in relation to expressionist dance which inevitably involves acting (even when the dancer is ‘playing themselves’ as it were), the dancer is loosing themselves in their part, whereas Cunningham rejects this added expression in favour of what is inherent in movement. When interpreted in terms of personal identity, it is tangible that both Graham and Cunningham are contradicting their intentions. In trying to dance her own experience, Graham is playing a part (in presenting an emotion that is not current) and therefore loosing herself (according to Merleau-Ponty). Subsequently, Cunningham is inevitably presenting himself because he is not playing a part, and his self is therefore not lost.
Even though no reading or meaning is intended of Cunningham’s dance work, his works have a dramatic life. When considering the opening two duets of the Cunningham’s 1980 collaboration with Charles Atlas Locale, the poses that the dancers return to have a romantic quality to them. This is especially true in the second duet when the male dancer of the pair holds the female in a black and white film/ballroom dancing style embrace, lowering her to the side. Cunningham himself states in his publication Changes: Notes of Choreography in reference to his piece Crises (1960) that such movements ‘always looks as though they mean something.’ (Cunningham, 1968: 151) Slyly written in the corner of the page is; ‘well they do.’ Cunningham accepts that his works inevitably have a dramatic life and ‘meaning’ (a dirty work for Cunningham), although it is not intended in any way in the choreography or performance.
The manifestation of the self in Cunningham’s dance work was not caused by stripping movement of expression that clouds the self (although this is a factor), but by allowing for and encouraging the individuality of the dancer. This presentation of the self is inclusive of Cunningham’s personal identity, but is ultimately concerned with the individuality of his dancers. This again revolves around a rejection of previously existing Modern dance and Ballet principles, specifically the ‘idea of somebody who everyone as suppose to look like or be like.’ (Lesschaeve, 1985: 65) Being of no interest to Cunningham, he observed the dancers he had, what they could do and the physical differences between them, and considered the implications of these on dancing. As he tells Jacqueline Lesschaeve; ‘You can’t expect this one [dancer] to dance like another one.’ (Lesschaeve, 1985: 65) Cunningham subsequently built his choreography around his dancers, their bodies and their abilities. The extreme that he took this recognition of individuality to is best emphasized in Valda Setterfield’s account of how he taught her her solo for the 1968 piece Walkaround Time; he would not teach it to her physically. He sat on a chair and explained it to her and asked her to try movement, so that she did not let the movement on his body colour her sensibilities about it, and subsequently imitate how he danced the movement. (Cunningham and his Dancers 1987 in Kostelanetz, 1992: 103) Other than this approach, Cunningham tries ‘to give the movement clearly, so that it would be done clearly, each dancer in his own way.’ (Lesschaeve, 1985: 65)
Further to recognition of the physical differentiation between dancers, Cunningham recognizes that each dancer is an individual person, and that when each dancer is given movement, they do not just take it on to their individual physical body, but to their individual self. Physical differences have a concrete effect on the dancing, longer legs make movement look different (especially in the long leg lines of the Cunningham technique), and are arguably the differences that Cunningham primarily accepts and encourages. But, Cunningham also recognizes the effect of the self on movement; ‘It has to do with temperament and the way they see movement, the way they are as persons and how they act in any situation; all this affects the dancing.’ (Lesschaeve, 1985: 65)
In a discussion of modern dance, Cage refers to personality as; ‘a flimsy thing on which to build an art.’ (Cage in Huxley and Witts, 2003: 137) However, like Cunningham, he does not entirely dismiss personality, but claims that that is what is meant by the word style. (Cage in Huxley and Witts, 2003: 137) It is this ‘style’ that is encouraged by Cunningham in his dance works. He recognizes that each dancer is an individual and that each individual brings something different to the movement, physically and personally. By not colouring movement with unnecessary expressionism, he is allowing this personal identity of the dancer to be communicated. As I have stated previously, Hegel theorizes that action makes an implicit being explicit, but this is given further emphasis by Merleau-Ponty in the chapter of his Phenomenology of Perception entitled ‘Body as Expression and Speech.’ In this work Merleau-Ponty details that the body and the soul (object and subject respectively) are not detachable[1], and that the body incidentally has the power to disclose the thought and soul. (Merleau-Ponty, 1996: 197) It is ‘the body which points out, and which speaks…’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1996: 197) In this sense, any action of the body is expressing the self, unless coloured falsely with emotion. Therefore Cunningham’s work is once again presenting the self through uninflected action. The differences recognized in the dancers, and the elusive nature of the individual ‘style’ of a dancers execution of the same movement may be difficult to describe, but are nonetheless a philosophically and recognizably present self or personal identity. Jean-Paul Sartre touches on this elusiveness in his essay The Transcendence of the Ego, in which he maintains that we grasp other beings psychical states by analogy, and that our own psychical state is no clearer than another’s, simply more intimate. The significance is that we can recognise an ‘other,’ a different self. The significance is the same in Cunningham’s work; we recognize the dancers as individual selves rather than a part of a troupe (as in a Corps de Ballet.)
Although philosophically sound assertions, it would be difficult to argue a pro-identity stance in Cunningham’s work without basis in his comments and writings, in which he recognizes the fact that the body inherently presents the self. But Cunningham does not intend to present personal identity. He does not try and enhance its delivery, or show the emotions that are inherently experienced by the dancer when dancing, whether related to the choreography or not. And through rejection of these ideas, Cunningham allows the communication of the personal identity of the dancers in his work by letting their bodies ‘speak’, as Merleau-Ponty puts it. He even, inadvertently, mirrors Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the body as expression and speech, in claiming that he ‘[does] not understand how a human can do something that is abstract. Everything a human does is expressive in some way of that human.’ (Excerpt from Lecture Demonstration Given at Ann Halprin’s Dance Deck 13/10/1957 by Merce Cunningham in Vaughn, 1997: 100) In denying abstraction in movement and claiming that all movement is in some way an expression of the human undertaking it, Cunningham is paralleling Merleau-Ponty’s claims that the soul or self, inextricably linked and inherent in the body, is spoken through that body.


As I have mentioned before, in accepting the individuality of each dancer and letting their personal identity be communicated by not inflecting movement with any extra form of expression, Cunningham achieved what his modern dance peers attempted in terms of expression of self. In addition to allowing the inherent expressive capability of the body to present the personal identity of his dancers, Cunningham’s identity is present in his choreography via the movement vocabulary of his work. Like his modern dance peers Cunningham created a technique based around the way he danced and wanted to created dances. (Marianne Preger-Simon in The Forming of an Esthetic 1985 in Kostelanetz, 1992: 60) Both justifications express personal identity, in the Hegelian sense of action making being explicit, and the experience of self in our choices (e.g. likes and dislikes). (Fraleigh, 2004a: 54)
In my opinion, Cunningham’s ultimate recognition of the communication of the personal identity of the dancer in his dance work is in the title of his published interview with Jacqueline Lesschaeve The Dancer and the Dance. Taken from the last line of W.B. Yeats’ poem Among School Children, ‘How can we know the dancer from the dance?’, the implication is that the two are inextricable, and that we know the dance solely though the dancer. The dance is so coloured by the dancer that in its pure from dance must involve a presentation of the self along with movement. Considering this, it is hard to give weight to claims that Cunningham’s work is dehumanized.
[1] This is further to Rene Descartes proposition that the mind is not in the body like a pilot in a ship, when my body is hungry I want to eat in his Sixth Meditation. Note that Descartes is distrusting of the body and all experience associated with it, as such experience could be the deceptive products of the mind and that the mind and body can exist separately, for example if I loose a foot I don’t loose a part of myself (from his second meditation). Despite the difference in ideas about the mind, body and self, I refer to Descartes as his work is the basis for phenomenology.