Judson Dance Theatre and Postmodern Dance

[US] Wendy Perron

[Abstract] Judson Dance Theatre was a collective of dancers, artists and musicians in the early 1960s who challenged the conventions of concert dance.Their experimentation was so destabilizing that it was called “a bombshell thrown into the modern dance world.” This essay tells how Judson started as a composition class in the Merce Cunningham Studio in NYC and goes on to describe the kinds of experimentation with natural movement chance procedures.Subsequent generations further developed the ideas into what became known as postmodern dance.

[Keywords] Judson Dance Theatre, postmodern dance

Judson Dance Theatre was a collective of dancers, artists and musicians in the early 1960s that challenged the conventions of concert dance.The experimentation was so destabilizing that dance educator Pauline Tish called it “a bombshell thrown into the modern dance world.” Like other periods of intense artistic experimentation, e.g.the Diaghilev years and the Bauhaus in Europe, artists of different disciplines sparked each other’s imaginations.

The modern dance world had become formulaic in the way the dances were choreographed and performed.As Tish has written, “The time was ripe for a major move from the predictable to the unpredictable, from already institutionalized self-expression to an in-depth aesthetic and philosophical approach which would change the inner workings of dance.” Although the Judson Dance Theatre was only active from 1962 to 1964, it gave birth to post-modernism, which has become a good mode of contemporary dance.

This major shift started in the workshops taught by Robert Dunn in the Merce Cunningham studio in 1960.Dunn, a piano accompanist for Cunningham’s dance classes, had studied with John Cage in his famous course in experimental music at the New School for Social Research in the late 1950s.(Others in that course included Allan Kaprow, who became the inventor of “happenings,” composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, and his then-wife Yoko Ono.) John Cage, the composer/philosopher who was partners with Cunningham both artistically and personally, had three major ideas that influenced people in dance, music, visual arts, and theatre.First, that all sounds are music.He considered anything that you hear —— cars on the street, people talking, the hum of a refrigerator —— to be music.Second, that music and dance do not need to match each other.The idea is that each person in the audience sees the dance and hears the music and creates their own meaning from the combination.Third, that art should not be separated from life, but that art and life should be as closer as possible.These ideas are related to Cage’s keen interest in Zen Buddhist philosophy, which led him to use theI Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes, to make decisions while composing.

Dunn began teaching these ideas to a group that at first consisted of five students.Among them were Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton (who was in Merce Cunningham’s company) and Simone Forti.Dunn conceived of the workshop environment as “a ‘clearing,’ a sort of ‘space of nothing,’ in which things could appear and grow in their own nature.” He rejected the approach of Martha Graham’s music director, Louis Horst, who taught that choreography should be modeled on conventional structures, like theme-and-variations and the A-B-A format.Taking the lead from John Cage’s methods in experimental music, Dunn introduced chance procedures to generate movement.Sometimes his assignments were wide open, bound only by the merest structure, e.g.“Make a three-minute dance.” Or he would give the classic Dadaist assignment to cut up something old and make it new.While discussing the students’ attempts, he was careful not to judge.Instead of telling them whether their piece was good or bad, he asked them how they made it.

Stimulated by Dunn’s assignments and encouraged by his curiosity, the students found new ways to make dances.The archival photos of this period may not look like dance to us, but they are from a period of creativity.The students challenged the necessity for cohesiveness, for virtuosity, for entertaining the audience, and for theatrical illusion.

Let me go back to Cage and Cunningham.Logically, if all sounds are music, then all movements, no matter how simple or casual or weird, could be dance.But Cunningham kept his choreography within the realm of technical dance that only trained dancers could do.It was Robert Dunn’s students who put this part of the theory into practice.They were running, walking, including everyday gestures, and worked with odd props like a balloon, a radio, a bunch of sponges.

Also, they were influenced by Anna Halprin in California, where she danced outdoors to connect movements to nature.She developed scores (structures) for task dances and natural movement.She was interested in what the human body does every day, functional things, like sweeping the floor, rather than performing for an audience.Rainer, Forti, and Trisha Brown all had studied with Halprin during the summer in 1960.It was the encounter between Halprin’s aesthetics and Cage’s ideology that ignited Judson Dance Theatre.

Simone Forti had studied and danced with Halprin since 1956.When she came to NYC in 1960, she brought Halprin’s ideas of task dance, natural movement, and improvisation, to NYC, to Robert Dunn’s class.She had a strong influence on Rainer, Paxton, and Trisha Brown, who joined Dunn’s class in 1961.

In 1962, the students had many dances to show, and they searched for a place to perform their work publicly.Rainer and Paxton auditioned their dances for a panel of dance experts from the 92nd Street “Y,” which was the stronghold of modern dance in the 1950s and 60s.They were rejected； they were told their work was not dance-y enough, which was true, considering the Y’s performances were on a proscenium stage.Yvonne Rainer knew that Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, housed an art gallery that produced happenings by visual artists like Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, and Allan Kaprow.They also produced theatre pieces and poetry readings.The associate minister welcomed the young dancers.

The first performance, in July 1962, included 23 works by 14 young choreographers.Judson Dance Theatre was born as a true collective that made decisions collaboratively.Over the next two years, many young choreographers showed their works in the basement or sanctuary of Judson Memorial Church.They included Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, David Gordon, Elaine Summers, Deborah Hay, Trisha Brown, Rudy Perez, Lucinda Childs, Judith Dunn, and Sally Gross.More experienced dance artists like James Waring, Remy Charlip, and Aileen Passloff also presented works there.

One can compare the differences between Horst’s and Dunn’s methods with those of modern and postmodern dance.On the modern side is dance in the service of a narrative, phrasing that builds to a climax, dancers who are highly trained, the center of the stage being the most important spot, and a reliance on familiar A-B-A structures.In the shift to postmodernism, the dancers wished to break down the hierarchy between choreographers and dancers, utilize all kinds of movement including everyday gestures, use task-like structures and scores instead of following the music, decentralize the stage space.

Visual artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, Alex Hay and Robert Huot (married to Twyla Tharp at the time) made dances too; so did composers like Philip Corner.Collage, fragmentation, looselystructured scores, radical juxtaposition, and chance were shared methods； functional movement and spontaneity were shared values.Steve Paxton attributes some of his sense of permissiveness to seeing the anarchistic, on-theedge Living Theatre, which was downstairs in the same building.They did all kinds of crazy things.As Paxton said, “ ‘Why not?’ was a catch-word at that time.It was a very permissive time.”

Yvonne Rainer was very aware of the newness of what she was doing.She said, “There was ground to be broken, and we were standing on it.” They found alternative ways to present dance that was more intimate, less theatrical, and more connected to everyday life.

Here are a few examples of pieces done as part of Judson Dance Theatre.

(1) Trisha Brown’sLightfall(1963), where she sat on Steve Paxton’s back until he moved, making her fall to the floor, and then they traded places.

(2) Yvonne Rainer’sWe Shall Run(1963) set a group of dancers and non-dancers running in complex patterns.In an example of radical juxtaposition, she used Berlioz’s grandiose Requiem to contrast with the everyday-ness of people jogging.

(3) Steve Paxton’sMusic for Word Words(1963) were he inflated, with a vacuum cleaner, a huge plastic container which he had made with four extensions.Then, he deflated it until he could fill the four extensions with his four limbs and walked out.

What was happening at Judson paralleled the trends of visual arts and theatre at the time? Here are some of these trends with examples of other artists.

(1) An interest in process rather than product.Example: Bread and Puppet Theatre.

(2) Collaboration and community in theatre.Examples: The Living Theatre, The Open Theatre, and The Performance Group.

(3) Pop art, with the notion that everyday objects can be beautiful.Examples: Andy Warhol’s soup cans, Duchamp’s “found objects,” Rauschenberg’sBed(1955), in which the painting was an actual bed.

(4) Collage structures rather than linear or ABA structure.Examples: Dadaists like Schwitters, Rauschenberg’s collages mixing different materials, and montage in experimental film.

(5) Minimalist sculptors and painters distrusted the emotionalism of abstract expressionism, just as Cunningham and Nikolais distrusted Graham’s emotionalism.The minimalists were asking basic questions like: What are the qualities of the materials? What does or can the body do? Examples: Robert Morris, Donald Judd, and Sol Le Witt.

(6) Splitting the focus, de-centering the action.Example: the “all-over” paintings of Jackson Pollock.

All of these factors contributed to a new sense of engagement for the performer and a greater alertness for the audience.People watching have to decide for themselves where to look.This is what art scholar Carrie Lambert-Beatty calls “active viewers.”

JDT opened doors to many areas artistically and philosophically.The work that began as rambunctious and rebellious coalesced into a force that transformed modern dance into postmodern dance.(Of course modern dance still exists, and one could say that postmodern is part of the larger field of modern dance, or contemporary dance.) To be concrete about its legacy, I offer this list of the aspects that have evolved into what we call postmodern dance, along with some of the choreographers’ names:

(1) A new, more relaxed idea about the body.This came about at the same time as a strong interest in somatic practices, both as a healing method (e.g.Elaine Summers’s ball work, or kinetic awareness) and as a different way to use the body in choreography, for instance in work by Brown, Paxton, Forti, and Twyla Tharp.

(2) The human scale as opposed to heroic image of Martha Graham and José Limón.This has led to a willingness to reveal more about the dancers themselves, e.g.in Neil Greenberg’s work in which little stories about each dancer is projected on the backdrop.I also see this as leading to the current dances of cultural identity, e.g.Bill T.Jones and Jowale Willa Jo Zollar.

(3) Radical juxtaposition, where two very different objects or events or phrases coexist, side by side, as in the work of Rainer, and more currently, John Jasperse and Tere O’Connor.

(4) The “aesthetics of concurrence.” This is a term coined by art scholar Carrie Lambert-Beatty, who has written much about Yvonne Rainer’s works.When more than one thing go on at once, the audience must be open to multiple experiences.Current examples are the young choreographers Joanna Kotze and Netta Yarushalmy.

(5) Although improvisation was not part of Dunn’s classes, this mode has become one element in postmodernism through Trisha Brown.Ralph Lemon, Bebe Miller, Ishmael Houston-Jones, David Zambrano and Jennifer Monson all use improvisation in performance in brilliant ways.

In the 1960s, the Judson dancers disregarded the rule of theatrical performing and went back to the beginning of what they felt was essential for their art.They’ve built up their vocabulary from here.Trisha Brown has created the most original vocabulary —— folding the body along new lines, and the largest output of dances.David Gordon has pioneered a form of dance theatre with talking.Lucinda Childs has created meditative works with simple movements focused on pattern, repetition, and moment.The reigning postmodernist in Europe, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, was deeply influenced by the new vocabulary of Brown and the patterns of Childs.

In the United States, several African American choreographers have taken the methods of postmodern dance and combined them with stories of their heritage: Bill T.Jones, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Ralph Lemon, and David Rousseve.Scholar Ann Cooper-Albright has called their work “new epic narrative.” They ushered in a period of “cultural identity,” in which the choreographer deals with issues of race and gender.

Judson artists Brown, Paxton, Rainer Hay, Forti, Gordon, Childs have had long careers.Each one has had a major influence on the dance field.Many younger choreographers, like Stephen Petronio and Bill T.Jones, have been strongly influenced by the fluidity and complexity of Brown’s movement vocabulary.Jane Comfort has been influenced by David Gordon.

Some people prefer the term post-Cunningham to post-modern because they feel he is the one who opened doors to experimentation not based on narrative.I think that is a good alternative, and certainly many choreographers are very indebted to Cunningham.