DAN 27076 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Merce Cunningham, Postmodern Dance, Contemporary Dance
12 Nov 2018
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Merce cunningham(1919-present: considered modern & postmodern, developed cunningham technique which focuses on non-linear, non-climatic, non-psychological work, worked with composer john cage on "chance dance" happenings, meaning of choreography was to be determined by the observer. Is the fashionable term used to describe contemporary culture, or the very recent culture which we live amongst. The term is a loose one, hard to define because of vagueness about the modern era, there is no definite start or point of change when society suddenly became postmodern. The term gradually "crept in" during the 1980s: articles and books on postmodernism started to be published from the early 1980s. Modern, postmodern, & contemporary: dancers forgot about the ballet boycott and started taking ballet class to strengthen their modern technique. Technique became set and strict, codified in the style of the originator, with emphasis on greater and greater achievement. Today almost every company has a mixture of ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary.
