Biography
Merce Cunningham was known as a “leader of the American avant-garde whose constant innovation and artistic collaborations expanded the frontiers not only of dance, but also of contemporary visual and performing arts”. His passion and drive to succeed and push boundaries of dance and technology helped him throughout his career and in the building of his own dance establishment, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He also worked closely with the composer John Cage, where together they created different, new music. He was one of the most daring choreographers of his time regarding the exploration of technology in dance. He had begun to look into dance film in the 70’s, and further started to choreograph new dances using a computer program named ‘Dance Forms’. He also further created a webcast series where the public were able to view his teaching in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and could essentially sit in on the rehearsals
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of the company. This provided archival footage for the dance company now days. His interest in technology has greatly impacted the dance world, and has worked to combine technology and dance in a new and innovative way. Description Of Technology Helping Merce Cunningham to Communicate His Ideas To The Audience Technology has had a huge impact not only on society, but on dance as well. The new advances in the combination of dance and technology was extremely appealing to Merce Cunningham, which is why he was spent so much time and hard work into new developments. Technology allowed Merce Cunningham to communicate his ideas to the audience more clearly as his interest in technology allowed him to look at new ideas such as webcasts, which showed his ideas of ‘pushing the human body’s boundaries’, which then allowed his audience to view his ideas, thus Cunningham communicating his ideas to the audience through technology development. Technology unlocked a whole new dimension to dance, which Merce Cunningham, being the first one to look greatly into this, became known as one of the best choreographers to combine technology and dance together as a new aspect of dance. Summary Of Two Examples When Merce Cunningham Employed Dance and Technology Together Merce Cunningham’s use of the program ‘Dance Form’ allowed him the ability to choreograph an initial sketch for their ideas of the choreographers soon to be dance piece.
It allowed Cunningham to manipulate movements on the computer to have an idea of what they would look like in real life. This use of technology and dance combination helped communicate his ideas to the audience, as he was a choreographer primarily of modern dance, his use of technology was portrayed through is choreography, where his ideas of modern society and further technology were seen.
Employment of dance and technology were his webcasts to the public that communicated his ideas to the audience, as they were able to view his training and technique, taught by him. This meant a closer relationship between him and his fans/audience, and everyone was allowed access to his rehearsals, and furthermore is ideas and experiments with the combination of dance and technology
together.
Limón left to the world of dance a wide range of choreography and dance technique. His choreographic language is distinguished by his passion, expression of human emotions, spontaneity, and musicality. He had a great ability to express a dance in its purest essence, without gestures or unnecessary movements. His technique is one of the most preserved in America and you can find almost in every city a place where it is taught.
An example was through the performance when he had two people from the audience to join on the stage doing Corroboree dances.
Theater, in our culture, have grown rapidly over the years that it has been occupied. In 17th and 18th centuries, dances were written as record. As our cultural evolved, in 19th and 20th century, dancing became a dance notation. Each era has a different type of dance that related to that period of time. In able for dancers to be organized and taught the moves, they needed some type of teacher, which in our modern we call them a choreographer. A choreographer have the role to design dances, which can also refer to the design itself. A choreographer is one who designs dances, which can also be called dance composition. Mats Ek is a ballet and Swedish choreographer that creates new elements of movement and expression of dances throughout his life
Steve Paxton: Speaking of Dance – Conversations with Contemporary Masters of American Modern Dance. Academic Internet Video. Directed by Douglas Rosenberg. Oregon: Alexander Street Press, 1996.
Throughout the years, America has pursued the performing arts in a large variety of ways. Theatre plays a dramatic and major role in the arts of our society today, and it takes great effort in all aspects. Musical Theatre, specifically, involves a concentration and strength in dance, acting, and singing. This is the base that Musical Theatre is built upon. For my Senior Project, I helped choreograph multiple scenes in a community musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie”. Choreography is a way of expressing oneself, but it has not always been thought of for that purpose. Agnes de Mille’s expressive talent has drastically affected how people see choreography today. Agnes de Mille’s influence in the world of dance has left a lasting impact in the Performing Arts Department, and her revolutionary works are still known today for their wit, lyricism, emotion, and charm.
7.Jerome Robbins started his dancing career when he majored in chemistry in his college days. He went to American Ballet Theatre when he graduated from the university. He was always pursuing to introduce traditional ballet into Broadway. For years’ hard work, Robbins successfully produced a lot of dramas to the public and made huge success. He was featured by giving young actors pressures of producing dramas by themselves and mixed classical musicals with modern dancing.
...is wasn’t going to stop them from celebrating their freedom and rights and to fully devote oneself to the lord himself. Alvin Ailey’s “Revelation” take on modern dance really shaped what it is today. What really fascinated me the most was how he contributed to different techniques and moves and encouraged people to develop their own style of dance instead of mimicking other choreographers. Ailey used the memories form his past to his advantage into create deep, emotional pieces that are very different from other choreographers’ pieces. Ailey pieces always had a deep and powerful story behind them and created unique moves that spoke to the audience and conveyed what other choreographers and society was afraid to speak and express. Proving Alvin Ailey’s choreography was an important factor in shaping the definition of what is known as Modern dance today.
If composers are the masters of time, then the choreographer George Balanchine is the master of visual realization of that time in human terms. A master in both the kinesthetic and musical frames of creativity, he did not devote his energies to music visualization by assigning a certain number of dancers to represent strings, others the brass, and still others woodwinds or percussion but by creating a visual analogy in space that restates the musical structure with the trained dancer's body. He claimed that "Ballet... should not be an illustrator of even...the most substantive of literary sources. It will speak for itself. The ballet is flowers, beauty, poetry...I am, if you please, an advocate of pure art." Balanchine's most intense desire was "to make audiences see music and hear dancing."
During the show was appreciated various choreographic styles with a dramatic or soft performance, different musical rhythms, and cultural implications. Throughout the show the dancers’ movements excelled with professionalism and the elements, such as the light effects and the costume’s details, enhanced the choreographies. However, in all these factors mentioned above, helped to communicate the choreographers' intention on the meaning of the dance.
Cunningham is considered the first choreographer that proclaimed himself against the established conceptions of modern dance, and developed an independent attitude towards the arts. After the creation of his own company in 1953, Cunningham constructed works unlike any others seen before, challenging the audience to interpret a whole new experience. An exploration of the lack of emotions and intention in dance was a prominent theme in the 1960’s, an idea supported by Cunningham and seen in many of his works as he believed there was no need for figurative or emotional references within choreography. In saying this, despite the lack of interest in telling stories or explaining psychological states, Cunningham made sure that the drama and effect was not eliminated, focusing on the ‘intensity of the theatrical experience’, placing importance on the real ‘human emotion’ that was established on stage (D.Vaughan, 2011). Cunningham collaborated for many years with composer and partner John Cage, together offering a number of radical innovations to modern dance. The most famous, and controversial, of these concerned the relationship of dance and music. Cunningham and Cage believed that the relationship between music and movement is totally independent, one does not need to inspire or reflect the other. Cage’s scores were minimalistic and technologically
In the late 1970s, when the postmodern dance revolution was coming to an end, Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane arrived in New York with the intention of finding an opportunity as dancers-choreographers. Already experienced in the cultivation of dance, this pair of intrepid dumps all their knowledge (sports, gymnastics, social dances, Afro-Caribbean dance, art history, photography, contact improvisation and a recent training in modern dance) discovering, at every step, how to do choreography or the meaning of dance.
He is known for his dance. He made a new change in dance society. In early people usually, listen to only one kind of music. People want something new and he gave to them. He invented new moves. His moonwalk was an eye-catching feature and teenagers follow him by dragging their feats.
The arts is seen as a language or multiple ones in our society. Dance and other art forms give us as individuals the artistic abilities to speak in a way that can’t be spoken with actual words. To tell a story and convey a message in ways others cannot quite express. Art is an inexpressible connection of emotions and creativity that can not be expressed through spoken words. This is something that truly resonated with me as a dancer watching Dance Energies. May O’Donnell exposes this connection in dance through the use of different forces of energy give through the dancers. May O’Donnell choreographed this a work Dance Energies, on her professional company piece in 1959 to represent the importance of difference types of energies and the roles they play in our lives. The dancers use the connection of their own energy through the use of dynamics, musicality and emotional intention to display connectivity of our hidden language.
Bob Fosse changed the way audiences around the world viewed dance on the stage and in the film industry during his life. “Visionary, intense, and unbelievably driven, Fosse was an artist whose work was always provocative, entertaining, and quite unlike anything ever before seen.” dancehttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/bob-fosse/
“Dance, the art of precise, expressive, and graceful human movement, traditionally, but not necessarily, performed in accord with musical accompaniment. Dancing developed as a natural expression of united feeling and action.”