Everyone knows the general features of Cunningham’s choreography: the refusal of expressive forms, decentration of the stage space, the independence of music and movement, the introduction of chance in the choreography and so on. All these traits obey the same logic, the principle is to enable the movement by itself, without outside references. It was for Cunningham, to end the imitation of gestures: imitation of the “figures”, mimicry of the stage area which replicated the external space, and up to a kind of mimicry of the Interior , since the body was supposed to translate the emotions of a subject or group.
These three aspects conditioned by others, such as open space. As Cunningham writes: “Thinking the scene after the image of the perspective of the Renaissance he kept the ballet retained a linear space. Taking its roots in German Expressionism and the feelings of many American pioneers of American modern dance space broke into several pieces, or often simply in the hills dividing the static scene, in fact nothing to do with space larger scenic area, just getting the forms which, by their connection in time, gave a figure. Some conceptions of space from the German dance opened the space, leaving a momentary feeling of connection with him, but too often the space was not sufficiently visible, because the action was all in natural light, as atmosphere without land, without sky or hell. ”
In short, we can unite under the common features three principles to ballet and modern dance (from Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan to Martha Graham) which seeks to get rid Cunningham: a principle of expression, which means that the movements are the expression of emotions, a principle of lightness, even for sequences does not point upward motion, deny the weight of the body, and an organizing principle that makes the dancer’s body, or group dancers, an organic whole whose movements converge to an end.
These three principles are interrelated. For example, for Martha Graham in Embattled Garden, choreographed in 1958, movements in trying to reproduce the “interconnections of emotions such as sexuality, anxiety, tension and intensity of emotional experience in general by drawing a link between the center of the body and its periphery, and between the pelvic region and the rest of the torso. ” The organicity of the body is to serve the expression of feelings which the quality and determine the orientation of the sublime gestures up the sky. Moreover, the representation of the outside was related to situations and behavior where the body was committed, all often described in a narrative construction.
We know how Cunningham combat these three principles. Let’s say he is making two essential weapons: the introduction of chance in the choreography, and the decomposition of sequences “organic” movement, by leveraging traditional joints.
The effects of adoption as a method of chance will dance in all directions: ceasing to be finalized, the movement from more than one center intentional, that is to say, a topic that has personal feelings and wants to express them in some way. In fact, the very notion of subject (or “body-subject”) that tends to disappear.
A second consequence is reflected in the music-dance relationship. Chance makes impossible the connection between the two traditionally united, music offering the “indications” that allowed dancers to identify any changes in space, rhythm or connection with the movement of other dancers. If now is the chance that control these changes in dance sequences, more to do with music. Cunningham went so far in the emphasis on chance, it happened that the dancers might take knowledge of the musical score on the day of the first. We guess the effects: the music and dance were divergent series that came together at certain “structural points.” Between music and dance stood no report. Cunningham says: “It is essentially a non-relative (a non-relationship)”. With this Deleuzian term, we see how the choreography cunninghammienne approaches the theory of sets of Deleuze.
A third consequence of the introduction of random interesting: the break it operates under (or code) traditional possibilities of the body, thus opening to other possible movements not yet explored. Which means another break: the “models” of coordination. And these models always assumed (in the ballet, as in Doris Humphrey) an organic image of the body as a whole finalized. “It was probably one of the reasons I started using the methods of chance in my choreography, to break all models (patterns) stored personal physical coordination,” said Cunningham.
The latter joined the other method employed by Cunningham systematically to undo the organic body: the proliferation of joint movements, so that the sequences continue to coordinate with each other organically, gaining a kind of autonomy that comes autonomy even “body parts”. This is the whole-part relationship that is disrupted.
Cunningham technique offers maximum autonomy to parts of the body, allowing a series of disconnected movements are triggered and take place simultaneously in the same body. For example, Cunningham writes: “This includes the problem of balancing the body and the maintenance of a party against the other. If you use each time the torso as the center of balance and as a vertical axis, then the question of the balance will always be reported to the central part, arms and legs balanced each other on either side of several ways, and moving in opposition to each other. ProShape Rx If using the torso itself as moving force, allowing the column to become the motivating force in a visual change of balance, slows down the rendering will feel how far the change in the balance can go into a any direction, and in any combination of time, and then instantly move in another direction and in any other combination of any time, without having to break the flow of movement by clinging to the weight, either through a real change of motion, either with a stop in time, or through other means “.
If the center of balance is no longer torso or column as the axis vertical static, but the column moving independently, it is possible to disarticulate the movements of each other, since they longer refer to a fixed part of the body, but some mobile itself. This is no longer compared to only one party and one position of this part that members will have to be positioned for balance, but because multiple parties divided the movement in multiplicities. Therefore, that many lines and plastic mobile than other parts of the body will have to: the movements of the arms and legs will anticipate the balance to come, while balancing the body at this time. It is a paradoxical equilibrium (or metastable as Deleuze would call, according to Simondon), which implies tension and movement, and, above all, a kind of decomposition of the body in all its parts. The configurations of the arms and legs on one side and the other body breaking, limb movement disconnect to pass the moving equilibrium, not static, overlapping at the same time many positions in space. to vary non-organically, the movement reached a maximum of deformities and asymmetries as if multiple body coexisted in one body. Here the multiplication of the joints can introduce, at the same time, divergent series of movements: that of disconnected actions of other gestures in the same body, each one shaped body of a dancer from another body; those of music and gestures, individual or group.
It remains to determine what triggers the series of gestures, as Cunningham denied any reference, that is to say, any motivation (feelings or representations) of movement other than the movement itself. But how the movement can, by itself, lead the movement?
The main difficulty encountered by Cunningham can be formulated as: making a radical critique of traditional choreographic languages, refusing all foreign referent movement itself, how could he turn what remained of his critique in terms of movement, units of a new language?
But the very notion of criticism in this area is debatable. Because everything happens in practice gestures: gold, there is no movement which means the negation (other moves). There is no “negative movement”, so to speak – everything is affirmative, positive, in the fullness of the presence of dance movement. How, then, deny, deny the traditional choreographic languages? I mean, even when invents parodic or satirical sequences (classical ballet, for example, as with so many choreographers), the movement acts as a “denier” by becoming a sign, that is doubling for be at a semiotic level. Itself, in its kinetic and muscular development, it is purely positive. A movement is negative and negating a movement that interfere with each other as such.
But why did he deny it? Why did not he would get rid of it, just? Besides, is not that what Cunningham did?
The question is this: if Cunningham invented a new language without referent, it can only result from the denial of language referring to, that is to say, the denial of the referents of these languages. So it was an operation that remained on the aesthetic, not limited to the kinetic terms. One can imagine the pure movement without meaning (referent), but it will be of the type or acrobatic gymnastics (which still contains the direction dictated by its purpose). It is more difficult to conceive of pure movement that is simultaneously aesthetic, that is to say, the movement not conditioned by an outside agency, and yet fulfill certain requisites that make an object called “aesthetic”, such as saturation semantics, or the infinite singularity.
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The virtual device draws what remains unrepresentable motion and still there. That guarantees the “reflection” or rather, the operation “meta-infralinguistic” of the body that keeps the movement “pure” while sensible and expressive movement are recessed.
This finally implies that the encroachment of the sign and the context, consciousness and body, preparing to build a plane of immanence or consistency of the movements. This is the inherence of the building official (the movement) to the terms of the plan (the movement) which means that, more than all the other arts, dance is given immediately in the action itself to dance, its plane of immanence. To dance is to flow into immanence.
