Merce Cunningham ist tot

Dass die Amis das nicht verstehen konnten, verwundert nicht wirklich. John Cage UND Merce Cunningham, um damit klar zu kommen muss man mindestens einmal in seinem Leben in Paris gewesen sein! Whatever... Es geht um Bewegung, um Körperlichkeit, und ich liebe es!

Gehaltvollere Informationen bei Spiegel Online.

Körperbeherrschung

via Fenke

Als ich ein kleines Mädchen war träumte ich ein wenig weniger als andere Mädchen davon Ballerina zu werden. Dennoch nahm ich tapfer Ballettstunden - als Teil meiner Höhere Töchter Ausbildung - und schaffte es sogar in den Spitzenschuh-Unterricht. Irgendwann hatte ich die Nase voll von Tutu und Pianodudelei (ich hatte nämlich noch eine richtige Pianistin im Ballettsaal sitzen) und weigerte mich weiter die Tanzschule aufzusuchen. Ballett liebe ich heute sehr, nur eher theoretisch und dann auch bitte mit ein wenig mehr Sex und/oder Irrsinn.



Ich mag die Kombination aus völliger Körperbeherrschung und scheinbaren Kontrollverlust, der letztlich doch nur wieder Ausdruck der völligen Körperberherrschung ist. Teil 2 hier.

In the Middle Somewhat elevated

Kürzlich war ich gezwungen, für ein Ausstellungsprojekt meine komplette dreijährige Blogdatenbank nach zu reproduzierenden Beiträgen zu durchforsten und stieß auf das ein oder andere Posting, dass mich erneut erfreute. So beispielsweise das zu William Forsyths In the Middle Somewhat elevated. Als ich noch in Stuttgart studierte, schaffte ich es wenigstens hin und wieder zu einer Ballettinszenierung in die Oper. In Berlin war ich nicht einmal zum Ballett (weder passiv noch aktiv), dabei gab es mal Zeiten, in denen ich von einem Leben auf er Bühne träumte (auch wenn diese nicht lange anhielten...).

Dance with me

Leila hat mich an einen meiner (Neujahres)vorsätze erinnert: Wieder zu tanzen. Ich werde mir gleich morgen eine ganz tolle Ballettschule suchen und wieder so viel tanzen, wie ich es mit 17 noch tat!

documenta 12 ::: fridericianum level 02 ::: trisha brown

© Trisha Brown; photo Katrin Schilling / documenta GmbH

One of the artist's works at documenta 12 I really loved was the one by american choreographer Trisha Brown. Her work shown at Fricericianum’s second level was definitely one of those works that has the most admirers especially amongst visitors who normally don’t go and see art exhibitions that often. There is something happening, it’s an ongoing performance...



I love the work of Trisha Brown because of her aim to connect modern dance with art and not only in a „hey dancing is art“ way but in a conceptual way. Minimal Dancing as a form of Minimal Art. I wrote about an exhibition I visited at the Kunstmuseum Siegen a couple of months ago - Dance | See. It was about dancing as a theme in modern and contemporary art. Many artists like Robert Rauschenberg or Donald Judd also dealt with dance as a form of Minimal Art during their artistic careers a fact that lead me to the idea on researching dance and minimalism in order to get my phd (well let’s talk about it in a couple of months...). Yvonne Rainer (who’s performance I wasn’t able to see in Kassel, damn it – it was sold out too quickly!) and Merce Cunningham are also very important to mention in that context. But well, back to Mrs. Brown:


Credit: artsci

The fact that Roger Buergel chose her as an artist to participate in documenta 12 was quite surprising for her, and showed her that she seems to be accepted as an artist (and not “only” as an choreographer) at last – at the age of 71. The demand for her work is constantly increasing. Besides Kassel she has shows and performances running in Paris and Schwetzingen (Salvatore Sciarrino’s “Cold”) and in Aix-en-Provence (Claudio Monterverdi’s “L’Orfeo”). At documenta 12 she shows within one of the three leitmotifs “Is modernity our antiquity?” two of her choreographies from the 1970s – one of them “Floor of the Forest”.

© Trisha Brown; photo Frank Schinski / documenta GmbH

She lived the live I dreamt of when I was a bit younger than today. I used to dance a lot and loved it but never was that good to be a really good, innovative, remarkable dancer (I met some if those...). I always was too tall, to feminine, too unflexible, too whatever... Instead of trying to work into the modern dance section I quit ballet lessons (three times a week with “floor” exercise classes to stay flexible in addition) at the age of 13, totally devastated and disappointed. I restarted dancing around 19 (modern, ballet, hip hop you name it...) and loved it, but had to stop because of money issues... will I ever be able to start again?


Credit: artsci

Trisha Brown started her career in the 1960s. Trained in modern dance she came to SoHo, New York and rented a football-field large hall to start reinnovating modern dance. Raised in Aberdeen, Washington she quickly made contact with New York’s art scene of that time, with people like Robert Rauschenberg for example, with whom she should work a lot with. She worked for Merce Cunningham and gave Donald Judd’s wife dancing lessons. “These was a great time”, she says “everything was questioned, and so the work really got radical, like a manifest. [..] The only ones who were afraid of change, were the dancers.”



Trisha Brown broke with conventions and invented an abstract pattern of movements without any pathos. “Structure is my baby”, she says today. She started to dance in parks, galleries and public spaces, walked down fassades or staged a “chinese whisper” choreography on top of 12 roofs of SoHo. And she always worked with artists: Rauschenberg and Judd created settings for her stage performances, Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the lambs”) filmed her work, together with Lina Werthmueller she staged “Carmen” and Laurie Anderson composed her soundtrack. And finally Trisha Brown draw herself. With chalk between her fingers and toes she documented movements on paper. Some of those are shown at the documenta 12 aswell.



Related Links:
Trisha Brown Company
Trisha Brown at documenta12
Interview by Melanie Eskenazi

Recommended literature:

Walk it out

Is there somebody out there who is willing to sponsor me some dancing classes? Oh how I miss it...
Thanks to slight fever.

Dance, See

I've seen a really good exhibtion at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen today. Dance, See is a project by young art students of the Siegen University. Combining art didactic and art historic elements the students worked out an exhbition on Dance as theme in fine arts.

In this revealing exhibition dance is explored from the fine arts perspective of the 1960's to present. Questions asked are: what impulses and ideas do the fine arts garner from dance? What are the specific interests that the fine-arts-artists pursue in this dialogue? At the same time, basic choreographic positions are included in the observation. The exhibition then traces the history of the seminal co-operations and mutual inspirations, but also of the parallel developments in performance and conceptual art and their mutual interest in general anthropological, cultural, and popular forces. Among the many different aspects followed up on in more or less detail are: the separation of dance movement from its traditional "cause", from music, and the resulting exploration into the motivation and coordination of movements; how the coordination in group dance can be decentralized; how the hierarchy in a stage setting is decentralized; the discovery that everyday movements contain symbolic meaning; the conquering of urban space through the movement found within it; the eradication of expression and narration with the accompanying ironic and multi-media-based reintroduction of narrative elements; the use of the camera as the immediate counterpart to a dancer and the development of experimental documentary forms of recording - next to the traditional form of dance notation; how experiments in movement produced fertile ground for minimalist sculpture and video installations. (press release)

Artists featured are Dave Allen/ Douglas Gordon/ Jonathan Monk, Eleanor Antin, Charles Atlas, Sven Augustijnen, Antonia Baehr, Samuel Beckett, Jerôme Bel, Andrea Bowers, Ulla von Brandenburg, Trisha Brown, Helen Chadwick, Merce Cunningham, Rineke Dijkstra, Simone Forti, Dan Graham, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rebecca Horn, Jirí Kovanda, Mara Kurotscka, Yuri Leiderman, Auguste und Louis Lumière, Babette Mangolte, Bruce McLean, Eva Meyer / Eran Schaerf, Peter Moore, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Ulrike Rosenbach, Boy & Eric Stappaerts, Stelarc, Catherine Sullivan, Beate Terfloth, Peter Welz, Erwin Wurm.

After being launched in Siegen "Dance, See" will be presented in the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla.

Credit: museumfuergegenwartskunstsiegen.de

moloko's forever more...

best dance video ever!!!