Graham
1894-1991
Legacy:
She changed how dancers were perceived
onstage, devised new ways of moving and of
structuring movement, and created a training
system that continues to teach dancers to re-
fashion their bodies and souls into instruments
for fierce engagement. In addition to founding
a company that endures today, she was
instrumental in the creation of others: Israel’s
Batsheva Dance Company (1964), and the
London Contemporary Dance Company (1967).
A creative genius who had reinvented dance in
the twentieth century.
Method:
Like Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), Charles
Weidman (1901-1975), and others of her
generation who were considered pioneers of
modern dance in America, Graham aligned
herself with the ideas, developments, and
events of the twentieth century. As a result,
during her first six decades as a dancer and a
choreographer, she re-made herself and her
oeuvre several times—transforming the factual
and the narrative into passionate theatrical
abstractions.
Cunningham
1919-2009
Legacy:
Merce Cunningham’s approach to dancing was
distinguished by constant experimentation,
incessant questioning, perpetual curiosity, and
a distinctive attitude to collaboration across art
forms. American born and bred, but
international in audience reach and artistic
renown, he made dance a contemporary idiom,
an art form able to keep pace with, and at
times be ahead of, developments in other art
forms, and able to encompass advances in
technology and new media.
Across his 70-year career, Cunningham
proposed a number of radical innovations to
how movement and choreography are
understood, and sought to find new ways to
integrate technology and dance. With long-
term collaborations with artists like Robert
Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Charles Atlas, and
Elliot Caplan, Cunningham’s sphere of influence
also extended deep into the visual arts world.
Cunningham earned some of the highest
honors bestowed in the arts, and his dances
have been performed by groups including the
Paris Opera Ballet, New York City Ballet,
American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance
Project, the Lyon Opera Ballet, Ballett am
Rhein, and London’s Rambert.
(press janet stapleton, martha graham dance
company).
Method:
 the separation of music and dance, which
came about as a result of his early
collaborations with composer John Cage, and
which became a hallmark of his approach to
collaboration across the arts;
 the use of chance operations to determine
aspects of his choreography, again a principle
closely related to Cunningham’s connections
with Cage and other composers, in particular
those working in the 1950s and 1960s;
’ Graham learned that the body’s actions
revealed the mind and could tell truths not
communicable in other ways. This dancing
lesson formed the basis of Graham’s legend.
Recognized as one of the greatest artists of the
20th century Martha Graham created a movement
language based upon the expressive capacity of
the human body. Graham’s groundbreaking style
grew from her experimentation with the elemental
movements of contraction and release. By
focusing on the basic activities of the human form,
she enlivened the body with raw, electric emotion.
The sharp, angular, and direct movements of her
technique were a dramatic departure from the
predominant style of the time. In this interview,
Martha Graham speaks on the role and
responsibility of the dancer and dance technique.
Unisex bodies- Cunningham tried to do this --- but
Graham didn’t really do this --- where is your
evidence in the text? For this and your next sentence
– she had pretty conventional roles for gender in her
partnerships and thematics of americana
 the use of film and video to expand the
possibilities of dance, especially the spatial
possibilities, an aspect of his work that he
developed during the 1970s; and
 the use of computer software to generate
movement ideas, again a way to expand the
possibilities available to the choreographer, as
well as to the teacher of dance.
Like his apparently simplistic statement in 1952
that dancing is “an art in space and time”
(Cunningham, 1952, 150), and like his remark to
arts writer John Gruen in 1980 that he didn’t try
for a style but rather tried “to make things
clear” (Cunningham, 1980, 3), the convenient
summation of his work under four basic
principles belies the complexity behind
Cunningham’s work. Everything was process to
Cunningham, and process is never static or
easily summarised or pigeon-holed.
For Cunningham, the different sensory channels
are autonomous, a situation that reflects the
arbitrary correlation of sensory events in life. It
also frees the dancing from slavishly following
or contrasting with the music. Yet without
corresponding directly in rhythm, tone, color,
or shape, the expressive elements that coexist
simultaneously in the dancing, music, and
design do create an overall effect. Cunningham
isn’t interested in making sure the audience
“gets” a particular message from a dance, but
rather in presenting a variety of experiences—
aural, visual, kinetic—which the spectator is
free to interpret or simply absorb.
It also under- mines literal meanings attached
to sequences of movements or combi- nations
of body parts. But Cunningham’s program does
not allow for improvisation by the dancers or
spontaneous determination of phrases, since
the speed and complexity of his movements
would make certain situations physically
dangerous. Once determined, the paths and
positions of the dancers must be exact.
Cunningham’s radical innovations in dance
(beginning with the dances he made in the
early 1940s, while still a dancer in Martha

Background:
One of three daughters born to a doctor who
specialized in mental disorders and a mother
who claimed descent from Miles Standish,
Graham spent her childhood years in two very
different environments. The family’s move to
Santa Barbara, California, changed her life. The
sunshine, ocean waves, and mild temperatures
had a liberating effect on a girl of fourteen. The
social climate too—with its Chinese and
Spanish populations and its artistically inclined
sunseekers—differed from that of straitlaced
Alleghany. It is not surprising that her
choreography frequently expressed a tension
between puritanism and desire, between
society’s decrees and freedom of spirit.
Graham’s early years in dance— first as a
serious student and then as a performer of
burgeoning talents—were spent in disguise. In
1911, she had seen Ruth St. Denis (1879-1968)
in a solo program of dances that evoked the
mysticism of India and Ancient Egypt, and had
been enthralled by the mixture of glamour and
spirituality that the artist conveyed. When St.
Denis and her husband, Ted Shawn (1891-
1972), opened their Hollywood school,
Denishawn, in 1915, Graham was among its
first pupils.
Along the way, she received an education in
theatricality, including the effects of stage
lighting, the play of fabric, and the ability to
grasp and hold an audience’s attention.
Graham’s company) parallel those of John
Cage, his long-time friend and associate, in
music. Essentially, they make the following
claims: 1) any movement can be material for
dance; 2) any procedure can be a valid
compositional method; 3) any part or parts of
the body can be used (subject to nature’s
limitations); 4) music, costume, décor, lighting,
and dancing have their own separate logics and
identities; 5) any dancer in the company might
be a soloist; 6) any space might be danced in;
and 7) dancing can be about anything, but is
fundamentally and primarily about the human
body and its movements, beginning with
walking.
Background:
Born in Centralia, Washington State, and
trained initially at a local dance school and then
at the Cornish School in Seattle, Cunningham
worked as dancer and choreographer for over
seven decades. In his early career as a
professional performer he danced with the
company of Martha Graham before embarking
on a new path of personal creativity. For the
company he formed in 1953, initially called
Merce Cunningham and Dance Company.
Cunningham first experienced dance while
living in Centralia. He took tap class from a
local teacher, Mrs Maude Barrett, whose
energy and spirit taught him to love dance.
Her emphasis on precise musical timing and
rhythm provided him with a clear
understanding of musicality that he
implemented in his later dance pieces.[5]
Merce Cunningham. Cunningham Dance
Foundation, 1980. VAST: Academic Video Online.
Alexander Street Press. Accessed 27 June 2015.
He attended the Cornish School in Seattle,
headed by Nellie Cornish, from 1937 to 1939
to study acting, but found drama's reliance on
text and miming too limiting and concrete.
Cunningham preferred the ambiguous nature
of dance, which gave him an outlet for
exploration of movement.[6]
Interview with Merce Cunningham. MacNeil-Lehrer
Productions, 1999. Dance in Video: Volume II.
Alexander Street Press. Accessed 27 June 2015.
During this time, Martha Graham saw
Cunningham dance and invited him to join her
company.[7]
California’s atmosphere of freedom of
expression and liberal thought contrasted
sharply with the puritanism of Pennsylvania.
For Martha, the differences between the East
and West Coasts would become polarized
between suppression and paganism, restraint
and liberation.
That summer she attended the year-old
Denishawn school in Los Angeles and came
under the tutelage of Ruth St. Denis and Ted
Shawn. Reveling in classes in Delsarte,
decorative movements of the body, ballet, and
piano, Graham imbibed the freedom and
exoticism St. Denis and Shawn promoted.
Inspirations and Events:
She was attuned to the current interest in
industrial design, as well as the tempo of city
life and social pressures of the 1930s. She
performed her innovative solo, Lamentation
(1930), almost completely encased in a
confining jersey tube.
World Wars I and II
Stock market crash
The Great Depression
Primitive Mysteries, her landmark piece of
1931, with its allusion to Christian rituals
among Native Americans of the Southwest,
radiated a richer vision of simplicity, the
support of a group for an individual, and
marked Graham’s first important exploration of
ritual.
Like many writers and painters of the 1930s,
Graham was interested what it meant to be an
American artist. A compulsion among artists to
examine the country’s past and democratic
roots, as well as its challenging present, arose
in part as a response to the rise of fascism in
Europe. Graham’s 1936 Chronicle and her 1937
solo Deep Song have been considered as
reactions to the Spanish Civil War and all that
Adolf Hitler’s maneuvers might presage; her
opening solo in Chronicle was titled “Spectre
1. "Merce Cunningham".
mercecunningham.org. 2013.
Retrieved 2013-03-13.
In 1939, Cunningham moved to New York
and danced as a soloist in the Martha
Graham Dance Company for six years. He
presented his first solo concert in New York in
April 1944 with composer John Cage, who
became his lifelong romantic partner and
frequent collaborator until Cage's death in
1992.[8]
Kaufman, Susan (30 August 2012). "John Cage,
with Merce Cunningham, revolutionised music,
too". Washington Post. Retrieved 28 June 2015.
Inspirations and Events:
Cunningham’s explorations into how dance
exists in time and space included a rejection of
the idea, traditional to both classical and much
modern dance, that center-stage is the visually
dominant position. His Summerspace (1958),
made using chance procedures to determine
movements and directional patterns, was, like a
Jackson Pollock painting, without a central
focus. The composition of Summerspace
suggested that the audience was seeing part of
a much larger canvas of movement, one that
continued beyond the stage space and that
included the audience within its scope. This was
a radical and uncomfortable suggestion for
many dancegoers at the time. But the idea has
since become an influential concept and a
wellused choreographic tool. In terms of a lack
of central focus, Cunningham’s CRWDSPCR
(1993), made using DanceForms software, has a
similar feel. But there is little sense that
CRWDSPCR, 35 years younger than
Summerspace, is a radical departure from
known choreographic structures. It recalls
Grand Central Station Concourse at rush hour,
and much of that sense of comfort in the
known is a result of Cunningham’s own early
investigative work.
Cunningham’s dances celebrate the states of
uncertainty and simultaneity that characterize
modern life and art. They decentralize space,
telescope or stretch time, and allow for sudden
1914.” unison activity, repetition, and rich variety and
dispersal. They do away with the familiar
https://marthagraham.org/portfolio-items/ comfort and predictability of dance movement
chronicle-1936/ that follows either a musical structure, a story,
a psychological makeup, or the demands of a
In these dramatic dances and later ones, proscenium stage-frame.
Graham often dealt with multiple personae
(usually played by different dancers): for
example, the two aspects of Emily Dickinson—
one who spoke and one who danced—in Letter
to the World; the three “remembered children”
in Deaths and Entrances; the mature heroine
and her younger self in Clytemnestra (1958);
and the three aspects of Joan of Arc in Seraphic
Dialogue (1963). This strategy helped to give
her works a kind of cinematic fluidity; it can be
seen, too, in relation to Cubism, with its ability
to depict past and present simultaneously and
intertwined.

Diversion of Angels (1948), in which she did not

appear—she presented her own female version
of the archetypal hero she discovered in the
writings of Carl Jung: the artist-heroine who
descends into the depths of her unconscious,
battles her fears, and emerges into the light.
Graham’s movement vocabulary became less
forthright, although no less powerful. The
dancers’ bodies twisted and torqued to convey
indecision or anguish.

Technique: Technique:

Graham also developed a training system to As impressive as his choreographic explorations

make her women dancers stand for humanity.
Stamina and strength were required for their
repeated jumping, their thrusting gestures,
their ability to drop to the floor and return to
standing in seconds. She built a system referred
to as “contraction and release”— an image of
recoiling and advancing, in which a sudden
caving-in of the ribcage, as if in response to a
blow or a sudden gasp, was followed by an
expansion and an intake of breath. It was an
optimistic image; every fall contained the seeds
of its recovery.
Straight back – contractionn then stretch into a
release- dramatization in body form of the
process of breathing. It’s the first and last thing
they do. Contraction – taking the breath in,
and their outcomes are, at least as significant is
the dance technique he developed over time.
Brown has astutely remarked that the
Cunningham technique “evolved out of his
personal explorations in determining the
primary needs necessary to train the whole
body so that it could be ready to move in the
many ways possible to it, without adhering to
any one rigid style” (Brown 31). Cunningham
technique develops flexibility and strength. It
encompasses the premise that every part of the
body has a unique and important role to play in
dancing. It focuses on the ability of the spine to
be flexible. It develops the body’s ability to
change direction quickly and purposefully. It is
a gift to the dance profession. Those who
embrace its ideas, whether they work strictly
release- taking it out. The body is used as an
instrument of breath.
Into the body rather than away from the body.
Reaching – the balance of the body and
demonic use of the muscle of the thighs to get
weight off the knees.
Contraction prone (pleading). Contraction from
the floor or to the flow. Using the lower part of
the back without any jerk.
Collaboration:
Heretic, The dance premiered seven months
before the stock market crashed, but in its
within the Cunningham “framework” or
whether they use it for their own ends, create
better dance by calling on the way of moving
that it promotes.
When one watches a Cunningham dance
performance, one would experience an array of
bodies moving in different directions in every
corner of the space, with hardly any moments
of unison. One would also see a lot of shoulder
twists, torso tilts, chasses, supported arms in
what appears to be ballet demi seconde, fourth
or fifth positions and elaborate footwork.
Cunningham required strong, supported bodies
with excellent technique who were capable of
maintaining lines, strong arms and high
extensions. I would even go as far as saying that
his choreography required dancers strong in
ballet technique in order to be able to execute
his movement.
Technique as a way to facilitate how to move.
There are certain limits to what the human
body can do but within the limits the variety is
endless. We know we can bend, rise, extend,
turn and jump. Then there are 3 ways to go
through/ cross space- down or straight across
or up. At the same time, with these limits, there
is an endless variety of ways of using them.
Begins technical class standing with feet
parallel, position chosen purposefully – if one
gave them a turned out position without being
aware of what standing is then they would
struggle (sometimes, dancers would come with
limited dance training).
Stripping of personal style.
Changing of directions quickly.
Attitude pivot- like graham
The technique emphasizes clarity of form,
coordination of torso and legwork,
rhythmic accuracy, spatial awareness
and virtuosity.
Collaboration:
Cunningham’s explorations were also a
significant step in the history of artistic
austerity and economy of means, it could be
said to presage the ensuing Depression. The
filigree lines of art nouveau had given way to
angularity and uncompromising modernism. In
this change of artistic vision, Graham owed
much to Louis Horst (1884-1964), the pianist
and composer who had been Denishawn’s
music director and became hers. While
spending time in Vienna in 1925, he had
become aware of the strong, personally
expressive work of the German
dancerchoreographer Mary Wigman (1886-
1973)
Experimentation:
Along the way, she received an education in
theatricality, including the effects of stage
lighting, the play of fabric, and the ability to
grasp and hold an audience’s attention.
Acts of Light
collaboration. Cunningham began quite early to
work with the idea that individual contributions
to a collaboration remain just that: individual.
In conversation with Jacqueline Lesschaeve in
the 1970s, he said: “What we have done in our
work is to bring together three separate
elements in time and space, the music, the
dance and the decor, allowing each one to
remain independent” (Cunningham, 1991, 137).
Such explorations opened up not just new ways
of making dance but also new ways for the
spectator to watch and be involved with dance.
Cunningham’s collaborators have included
composers John Cage, David Tudor, David
Behrman, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young,
and visual artists Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper
Johns, and Andy Warhol.
Experimentation:
His experiments with film, technology and new
media did the same. One of the last works he
created, eyeSpace (2006), involved the use by
the audience of iPod Shuffle devices. They gave
audience members a unique and personal
listening experience. Then, the creation in the
2000s of a series of webcasts, Mondays with
Merce, opened up classes, rehearsals,
interviews and archival footage to a whole new
audience.
Sounddance
Technique: chennes in 2nd on straight and bent
knees
Circle- can be small of big or circuitous.
Animals surrounding a prey- come at something
from different angles. It completes itself.
At no point is there unison.
Find stillness in circle, then scatter into little
solos or duets at different parts of the stage.
Coming in from the back 1 or 2 at a time-
construction of continuity
Full port de bras if upper body while
performing intricate foot work such as fondues,
triple runs, coup de pieds.
Not dancing with the music to keep them
together.
Motif of a turned in attitude penche, be it alone
or in a group.
Retire pivots.
Drapes scenery
As much activity of different kinds that
Cunningham can think of- doing things on the
floor, to standing, to up. He didn’t ever want
them to dance in unison- only a couple pf times
this happens.
Trying to fing movements that were abrupt and
fast
Action between dancers almost like percussion.
Trying ti think about things that would be
active.
Not something polite- but abrupt.
Shapes in groups.