The Choreography of Space: Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe in Context
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The Choreography of Space: Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe in Context Arabella Stanger Goldsmiths, University of London PhD April 2013 1 I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own and has not been and will not be submitted, in whole or in part, to any other university for the award of any other degree. Arabella Stanger 2 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank Professor Maria Shevtsova for her rigorous supervision of this thesis. She has shown me the importance, and the enjoyment, of a way of thinking, and how ‘the art’ must lead in the scholarship of dance. Mentorship of this kind is invaluable. I would also like to thank my fellow postgraduate students at Goldsmiths, University of London for on-going conference around our shared and diverse subjects, and Dr Seb Franklin, for some inspiring conversations. I am extremely grateful to Freya Vass-Rhee of The Forsythe Company and David Vaughan of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for giving me access to real treasures. The archives that have generously facilitated my research are: the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Archive, New York City; the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library; the Judson Memorial Church Collection, Fales Library, New York University; the Laban Archive, London; the National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Surrey, Guildford; and the Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. My sincerest thanks go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for supporting this project and sponsoring a research trip to New York in 2009. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of Holly Webber. 3 Abstract This thesis takes the work of Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe as case studies for a socio-historical analysis of choreographic space and, in so doing, develops a sociology of dance around the qualitative study of spatial aesthetics. By locating the spatial innovations of these artists in the social space of their practice and in the light of spatial models inherited by each, it argues that the choreography of space can express ideals of human relationality produced in and productive of its broader societal landscape. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s con tention that ‘t he space of a (social) order is hidden in the order of space’ , the thesis takes classical ballet as a primary example of how political ideals come to be embodied in spatial aesthetics and uses the ‘classical model ’ to coordinate a sociologically orientated dance-historical context for these artists. The thesis is structured around four case studies that together form a context for understanding Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s spatial practices. These are: firstly, a sociopolitical history of harmony in courtly expressions of classical ballet from fifteenth- century Italy to late Imperial Russia; secondly, an analysis of George Balanchine’s and Martha Graham’s respective choreographies of the ‘American geographical imagination’ ; thirdly, a comparative study of Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s theories of space and technology in their pre-war German contexts; finally a contextualisation of John Cage’s 1952 event in relation to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘electronic age’ and John Dewey’s ‘democratic ’ social space. The final two chapters weave these spatial models into comparative frames for measuring the socio-historical specificity of Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s choreographic spaces. Cunningham’s ‘no fixed points’ aesthetic is understood as producing a coexistent space commensurate with McLuhan’s electronic paradigm and Dewey ’s democratic individualism . Forsythe’s fluctuating space is understood as producing a ‘space of flows’ emblematic, for Manuel Castells, of a late twentieth-century ‘digital age’. 4 Table of Contents Page Introduction ………………………………………………………………..... 6 Chapter One: Th e Classical Model …………….................................. 31 1. Fifteenth-century dance treatises and humanist notions of harmony ……………… 3 5 2. The ballet de cour and monarchical power ……………………………………….. 4 4 3. Eighteenth-century dance manuals and the codification of the classical model ….. 56 4. Choreographing space on the Russian Imperial stage …………………………….. 63 Chapter Two: Cla ssical Reforms in North America …………………….. 75 1. George Balanchine’s ‘American’ classicism …………………………………….. .. 83 2. Martha Graham ’s ‘American’ expressionism ……………………………………... 92 Chapter Three: Movement Geometries in Pre-War Germany …………… 103 1. Rudolf von Laban’s space harmony ……………………………………………….. 108 2. Oskar Schlemmer’s spatial abstraction ……………………………………………. 122 Chapter Four: John Cage’s 1952 event …………………………………… 140 1. The Black Mountain context …………………………………………………….... 143 2. The 1952 event ……………………………………………………………………. 151 Chapter Five: Merce Cu nningham’s ‘No Fixed Points’ ………………... 165 1. Collaborative autonomy …………………………………………………………... 172 2. Chance choreography …………………………………………………………….. 184 3. Video and film ……………………………………………………………………. 198 4. The computer ……………………………………………………………………... 209 Chapter Six: William Forsythe and a ‘Space of Flows’ ……………….. 218 1. Moving through classical space ………………………………………………….. 226 2. Choreography and computation ………………………………………………….. 241 3. Choreographic environments …………………………………………………….. 256 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………….. 265 Notes ………………………………………………………………………… 271 Images ……………………………………………………………………….. 282 Appendix of Sources for Performance Analysis…………………………. 289 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………… 293 5 Introduction In his landmark theorisation of space and society, The Production of Space (1974), Henri Lefebvre critiques the notion that space might be under stood as a “pre -existing void” – an empty receptacle waiting, at any point in time, to contain action – by posing the following question: “Can the body, with its capaci ty for action, and its various energies, be said to create space?” (Lefebvre, 1991: 170). This question, which is subsequently elaborated into a concrete hypothesis, suggests that ‘space’ cannot pre-exist activity. Indeed, space, for Lefebvre, does not contain but is rather constituted by the exercise of bodies. That Lefebvre defines bodies quite broadly as “deployments of energy” and focusses his analysis on the spatial-creative processes of advanced capitalism as a global economic order, does not diminish the import of this statement for a consideration of human bodies dancing (ibid.: 171). His hypothesis that bodies create space is compelling as a provocation for the study of dance for two reasons: firstly because it provides a frame for defining choreography as an aesthetic activity and secondly because, given the broader conceptual treatment of ‘space’ in Lefebvre’s analytical project, it provides a point of departure for discussing the social quality of choreographic practice. ‘Choreography’ can be defined, through the prism of Lefebvre’s statement, as an activity that creates space (and time) through the organisation of moving bodies. 1 Indeed, it gives a heightened sense of space being made by bodies because, during the process of choreography and the performance of the dance that arises from it (which may happen after or at the same time as the choreographic process), space is plotted, shaped, and felt into existence by the organisation of a set of bodily movements. 2 These organised movements, furthermore, necessarily produce a space of a particular quality. The kind of space plotted (brought alive) by the performance of a piece of classical-balletic 6 choreography, for example, exhibits a special kind of harmony – in which constituent parts are arranged into a ‘well -proportioned’ whole – that is specific to this form. The notion that space is not only created by bodies but also done so in a particular, and therefore restricted, way is also noted by Lefebvre, who suggests that the body with the energies at its disposal, the living body, creates or produces its own space; conversely, the laws of the space, which is to say the laws of discrimination in space, also govern the living body and the deployment of its energies. (Lefebvre, 1991: 170) Again transposed for a consideration of dance, this statement suggests a way to characterise choreography as an aesthetic practice. Choreography is not only an activity that creates space through the arrangement of movement, but one that does so according to a set of laws or preferences of organisation, that is to say, according to a set of definable aesthetic principles. The space created in one piece of choreography is, necessarily, not the same as the space created in another, and this is owing to the aesthetic concerns that govern (or guide) the process and content of that choreography. The question of the way in which these aesthetic principles are set, who sets them, when, where, and why, points to the second reason that Lefebvre’s theory of spati al production is compelling for a study of dance.3 The notion that space and its laws of discrimination are created and not found, is adopted here as an instigation to take seriously this art form’s existence as a part of social life. The central convicti on of Lefebvre’s study is that space is produced, broadly, by the activities (conceptual and practical) of human beings who live in social relation to one another and, as such, it is a product of these relations in all their complexity. Put simply, because space is produced (and not simply occupied) by people, space is a social product. This postulation will be unpacked shortly in greater detail. But for now it is suggestive of how the choreographic production of