Performance Art4 Dunn on Dance * Social Performance 9 Robert
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VT performance art4 Dunn on Dance * Social Performance 9 Robert Wilson's Chairs * Rainer, Monk, King on Croce 9 Sister Suzie Cinema * MOMA Performance Archive 0 Czech Mail * Performance Books 0 Reviews $2.50 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/live.1980.0.4.1 by guest on 26 September 2021 L IV E performance art 4 Between the Covers 30 Publishers Dunn on Dancing 3 Tony Whitfield Bonnie Marranca John Howell talks Gautam Dasgupta with Douglas Dunn Executive Editor Staff Bonnie Marranca Robert Atkins The Social Performer 10 Reviews 33 Bruce Barber Bruce Barber Ed Friedman, Larry Miller, Lenora Champagne Editor Ralston Farina, William Daryl Chin John Howell Hellerman, Women's Interart Robert Coe Center Film and Video Meg Eginton 14 Les Chaises d'Antan Festival, Cindy Lubar, Garry Peter Frank Design Ann Sargent Wooster Reigenborn, Pooh Kaye, Susan Nancy Jones Gautam Dasgupta Rethorst, Peter Rose, Claire Tony Mascatello Bernard, Yoshiko Chuma, Ingrid Nyeboe Paul McCarthy, Lyndal Jones, Staff Photographers Moira Roth R.E.: Croce 18 Stuart Sherman, Richard Johan Elbers Tony Whitfield Letters from Yvonne Rainer, Gallo, Sheryl Sutton, Robert Nathaniel Tileston Ann Sargent Wooster Meredith Monk, Kenneth Wilson, Christopher Knowles, @1980 by LIVE magazine., LIVE is King Jack Smith, Maria Irene published four times a year by Perform- Fornes, Steve Busa, Chris ing Arts Journal, Inc. Editorial and Kraus, David Antin, Badomi business office: P.O. Box 858, Peter de Cesare, Leeny Sack, Mario Station, New York, N.Y. Prosperi. Stuyvesant Sister Suzie Cinema 23 260-7586. Unsolicited 10009. Tel: (212) Patricia Jones, Tony Mascatello manuscripts must be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Sub- scription rates per year: Individ- Cover Photo: Nathaniel Tileston uals-$9.00; Libraries and Insti- tutions- $16.00; Foreign, including F.Y.I.: MOMA 27 Canada, add $4.00 per year for postage. Daryl Chin talks with Cee Brown Request for permission to reprint any material in LIVE must be made in writing to the publishers. Advertising rates will be sent on re- Czech Mail 29 Petr Stembera quest. I A Periodical of Performing Arts Journal Publications Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/live.1980.0.4.1 by guest on 26 September 2021 '0>' I 2 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/live.1980.0.4.1 by guest on 26 September 2021 DUNN ON DANCING John Howell talks with Douglas Dunn Echo (1980) Was there anything different for you in Echo? there big enough to just do what you want. But you can make something pretty wild too. Coming off Suite to Suite, the piece I had just made in France, I retained an interest in getting a view of the piece from the outside. Don't you think the music had a lot to do with the calmness Which is probably why I was so separate within the piece. I that characterized Echo?' wanted to see all the sections as much as I could so I didn't put I had a strong sense of the music because we (John Driscoll and I) myself into it. This time I was certainly (and consciously) as in- had done a little Echo, a solo, for the Museum of Modern Art us- terested in the shape of all the people moving around as I was in ing those amplified saws. what each person was doing within it. Sometimes I get more in- terested in individual movement-it fluctuates. Obviously, they It was a very meditative sound, and as accompaniment to both have to be there, but I put more conscious effort into one or simpler movement and more orderly patterns, it set up a the other at different times. In France I definitely looked at the pastoral feeling. I think music always gives a lot of mood cues. time-consuming element there was showing the movement and Did you work with the music when you worked on the piece? getting the French dancers to understand it, to do it. By simplify- Not at all. ing the movement, I had more time to look at the shape. Have you ever developed a dance along with music? I also saw that emphasis on shale as a response to the peculiar I'm just starting to for space of the Kitchen. Most dance concerts there are forced to the first time. I didn't think I would ever build in a particular staging. want to, but if you're making something to a historical piece of music, like I'm supposed to be doing, you have to take some ac- It does ask you to pay attention because there's no interior space count of it. 3 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/live.1980.0.4.1 by guest on 26 September 2021 A classical piece? Yeah, "Pulcinella" by Stravinsky. I've started listening to it very carefully about how much I listen to it, not too much and not too little. I'm making up my mind slowly as I go along about how much I want to let the music influence me. This morning I listen- ed to a little of the music, then I focused in on one section which interested me and listened to it twice. Then I put it away. I don't know what I retained from it, mainly the rhythm and tempo I guess, something of the melody. I could hum a little bit of it after- wards. Then I started to make something which I thought of as possibly going with that music, and also as possibly going with that music along with other things that might be going on at the same time that wouldn't be as related to the music. So I made a phrase I didn't time the music because my stopwatch is broken and I didn't count the measures because I didn't have time before the dancers got here. So I made a fairly long phrase, maybe two minutes, and put it on videotape and we all learned it. Then I had the dancers give me numbers to randomize the sequence of the various events in this phrase to break it up. There were other numbers involved which I used in making up the score just to keep it loose. So we .ended up with seventy-seven measures of triple rhythn with very unpredictable repetitions. So you're wary of music as a mood-setter? To me, that's a difficulty, a problem. It's not a gift, it's not - oh great -here's this music I get to choreograph to. What did "Pulcinella" sound like to you when you first heard it? ~'; ~. Very claustrophobic, very tight and specific. I didn't want to see a dance that was parallel to it, that ended when its sections did, that changed rhythm along with it. No illustration. Right. I want something that I already know about in the dance, something that goes on and doesn't stop. I called the piece I made in France Suite to Suite which they tell me means continuous, and also suggests sections. That's exactly what the piece was like. Things never completely started or stopped, they were always merging. Echo, MOMA (1979) So you're circling around this Stravinsky music in the dance. The music is inevitable, the orchestra is going to play it, and I don't have any choice about that. I feel like messing it up. I want Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/live.1980.0.4.1 by guest on 26 September 2021 way it was long enough so that I as a performer - I don't know if I thought much at the time about how the audience related to something still-could let my mental events proceed while the situation stayed the same. That feeling was in and out of my work for the first few years including finally the piece where I was com- pletely still, 101. So one thing was stillness, the other was anxiety. When I danced with Merce, the physical work of the dancing was extremely arduous and complicated and was enough to absorb all of my attention. I enjoyed having all my attention taken up that way and letting whatever happened happen. I performed without ever considering performance. I performed the way I would have done any physical task. Later, when I started working with being still, I began to feel things about being in front of people and that was mostly anxiety. And it seemed relevant, it didn't seem to be something I had to overcome and I took it as material out of which I made work. What's happened to that anxiety and stillness? It's been absorbed somehow. And the stillness has been transorm- ed into movement. At this point there doesn't seem to be very much differnce between movement and stillness. It's more like the Lazy Madge (1977) movement is stillness. They seem equivalent to me now and that Diane Frank, Dunn, Daniel Press gives me permission to move as much as I want without feeling the music to have its own integrity, but I have to find a way to that I'm' making more of a mess. Generally, things seem like a make a dance in a shape which is agreeable to me at the same mess, and I don't want to make more of a mess. I think that's part time. The shape of the dance is not the shape of the music.