The Collapse of Hierarchies and a Postmodern Dance

Abstract

The character and development of the early Judson Dance Theater reflected, first of all, the nature of Robert Dunn’s classes in choreography from which the Judson group emerged. Held initially in the autumn of 1960 and culminating in the earliest of the dance concerts at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village in 1962, Dunn began his classes at the Merce Cunningham studio at the invitation of John Cage.¹ Cage himself, following the start of his series of influential courses on ‘Composition in Experimental Music’ at the New School of 1956-60 which were attended by Allan Kaprow and George Brecht among other artists engaged with Happenings, Fluxus and the new dance, had taught an analogous course on modern dance composition at the request of members of the Cunningham company.² Although he was neither a dancer nor a choreographer, Dunn had studied music and dance before attending Cage’s classes at the New School and shared both Cage’s eclectic interests and his enthusiasm for chance procedures. In his own teaching, Dunn not only drew upon his experience of Cage as a teacher, but sought to make clear methods and principles of composition close to Cage’s own. In her detailed account of the history of the Judson Dance Theater, Sally Banes emphasises the variety of influences acting upon Dunn’s work and sensibility which, quite apart from his enthusiasm for the contemporary arts, ranged from the Bauhaus to Heidegger, Sartre and Taoism. Nevertheless, Banes concludes, ‘for all the diversity of models, the unifying and paradigmatic form of choreography in Dunn’s class was the aleatory process.’³