Still images from the film CRWDSPCR (1996) CREDIT: From CRWDSPCR Directed by Eliot Caplan © The Merce Cunningham Trust, all rights reserved.

Dance and the Computer - Merce Cunningham

The relationship between dance and computers is about the search for an extra dimension to the processes of dancing and choreography. The concept of a symbiotic relationship between dance and computers has been in existence for some years. In the 1960s, Michael Noll of the Bell Labs, New York, was one of the first proponents of collaboration between computers and dance. Some experimental work was carried out which allowed very basic choreographic sequences to be generated. 1

In 1968 Merce Cunningham speculated presciently in his book Changes: Notes on Choreography, about the possibility of creating dancing stick figures on a computer display. Using electronic notation, the figures would move in space, so that you could observe the details of the dance: stop it or slow it down, play with the timing, see where in space each virtual dancer would be, and also observe the shape of the movement. Cunningham writes: “ It seems clear that electronic technology has given us a new way to look. Dances can be made on computers, pictures can be punched out on them, why not a notation for dance that is immediately visual?”. 2

Cunningham’s illustrative notes recording dancers’ paths in movement sequence XXVI from Changes: Notes on Choreography © Merce Cunningham Trust, all rights reserved.
Maze Sequence showing paths in space. The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms – Janet Randell © Cedar Dance Animations Limited.
Paths for Triplet Section in Dancing Forms For Eight, The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms – Janet Randell © Cedar Dance Animations Limited

Cunningham’s exploration of space, as recorded in his diagrammatical notes in Changes: Notes on Choreography3, offered a prophetic foresight into the representation of space and movement direction used in DanceForms many years later. For example, his use of colourful diagrammatic drawings to illustrate dancers’ individual paths in one of his dances, as shown above, seems to anticipate the way in which DanceForms allows the user to visualise space in digital choreography. In The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms, Randell demonstrates the visual appeal of working with space in DanceForms and how easy it is to create paths of the dance figures moving through space and time on a computer.4

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In the seventies and into the eighties there were developments in computer dance and notation, including Laban notation and Rhonda Ryman’s development of an editor for Benesh Notation. Ryman has since produced Ballet Moves II, which is available in DanceForms.

From the late eighties and nineties, Merce Cunningham collaborated with Professor Tom Calvert and his team from Simon Fraser University in developing a new computer dance software program. Cunningham together with Thecla Schiphorst, from the Credo Interactive Inc team at SFU, continued to develop Life Forms, later called DanceForms. The primary purpose was to produce a tool to both visualise and record animated figures interacting and creating art on a stage. Motion capture functionality was integrated into the program, allowing true motion movement and a 3D perspective.

Constantly experimenting with his dancers, the fusion of Merce Cunningham’s love of technology combined with his experimentations in challenging the physical possibilities of the human body resulted in the creation of many dances including Polarity (1990), Trackers (1991), Change of Address (1992), CRWDSPCR (1993), BIPED (1999), Split Sides (2003) and EyeSpace (2006).5

Photograph from BIPED, CREDIT:BIPED (1999) Choreography Merce Cunningham © Merce Cunningham Trust, all rights reserved.
Photograph from BIPED, CREDIT:BIPED (1999) Choreography Merce Cunningham © Merce Cunningham Trust, all rights reserved.

The use of computer technology in the creation of dance played a major role in Merce Cunningham’s ceaseless quest for experimentation in his choreographic use of space and in pushing the limitations of the human body.

Janet Randell © Cedar Dance Animations Limited 2019

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Cunningham spoke of the use of computers in dance with specific reference to Life Forms/DanceForms, and how it allowed him to visualise sequences and dance phrases on a monitor, which he would then translate into live movement with his dancers. He considered that using DanceForms allows creativity to be stimulated because you can do things that seem impossible, even ridiculous, but which inspire further creativity and from this, new ideas are created.6

Merce Cunningham said that DanceForms expanded dance because it enables you to see things that were always there but not necessarily visible.7

Curiosity and experimentation were key factors in Cunningham’s artistic approach:

Life Forms functions simply as a tool for the artist. The possibilities keep changing and expanding, but results will always depend on the creator’s curiosity and resources.8

With dancers you rehearse a while and then they want to rest; with the computer the figures just repeat and repeat.9

Many innovators, including Professor Stephen Hawking, share such creative ideas:

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the Universe exist. Be curious. 10

Following one approach to his artistic work, Merce Cunningham continued to use chance, for example, in determining the order of a sequence of movements, by rolling dice or tossing coins to decide “what limb the Life Forms figure will move next and in what direction.”11 He commented on his method of working with Life Forms / DanceForms:

I would use chance operations to make a sequence of the dance form on the program just to see what that looked like, very often of course, it was physically impossible but I always tried it out because even if you couldn’t do what had happened it led you to see something you hadn’t used before. 12

Cunningham also said:

If a dancer tells me that something won’t work, I say, Try it; if you fall down, you’ll find out something about falling down.13

You have to find a way to do what you can do. It is difficult for all of us, but if it’s something that interests you deeply, you will find a way. 14

One of Cunningham’s landmark dances, BIPED, encompasses not only human movement conceived using DanceForms but also abstract images and dance figures created from motion captured dance sequences re-imaged and re-sequenced on the computer in collaboration with Paul Kaiser [Dance and the Computer – Paul Kaiser] and Shelley Eshkar. The impact of BIPED is that the audience viewed over-sized dance images projected on to a sheer screen behind which live dancers performed simultaneously. Both live and projected movements were staged in a random and unique way. This exceptional work brought together computer technology and humanity, abstract and human, as well as the machine and the soul.

As his arthritis worsened, Cunningham continued to use DanceForms to develop and demonstrate challenging movement sequences for his dancers. He remained fascinated by separating movement from the corporeal body and placing it in a virtual space.15

Merce Cunningham was constantly pushing technological and physical boundaries to explore movement possibilities with diverse forms of computer technology. Cunningham made use of DanceForms and computer technology in a way that is unique to his genius.16

For more information see: https://www.mercecunningham.org

Janet Randell © Cedar Dance Animations Limited 2019

Footnotes

1 M Noll, ‘Choreography and Computers’, Dance Magazine, January 1967, Vol. XXXXI, No. 1, pp43-45;
M A Noll, Choreography And Computers, Philadelphia Art Alliance, November 9, 1966 [Online paper] http://noll.uscannenberg.org/Art%20Papers/Choreography.pdf (Accessed 20 June 2018);
T W Calvert, ‘The Evolution of Software for Dance’, Proceedings of Corporeal Computing: A Performative Archaeology of Digital Gesture, University of Surrey, School of Arts and Department of Computing 2 – 4 September 2013, pp8-9 [Keynote] and [Online presentation] https://vimeo.com/album/2583175/video/77526867(Accessed 20 June 2018);
T Calvert, L Wilke, R Ryman, I Fox, Applications of Computers to Dance – Credo Interactive, http://www.credo-interactive.com/danceforms/PDFs/CGAApril05.pdf (accessed 19 June 2018)
2 Merce Cunningham, Changes: Notes on Choreography, F Starr, ed., Something Else Press, New York, 1968 [No Page Numbering] Counting from title page: p51;
Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham Trust, MC Writings, Notations from Merce Cunningham – Changes: Notes on Choreography, [Online Extract] https://mercecunningham.org/MERCE-CUNNINGHAM/MC-WRITING-TEXT/PARAMS/TEXTID/7/ (Accessed 20 June 2018);
L Wilke, T Calvert and R Ryman, ‘From Dance Notation to Human Animation: The LabanDancer Project: Motion Capture and Retrieval, Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 2005, Vol 16, Issue 3-4, July 2005, pp201-211;
T W Calvert, ‘The Evolution of Software for Dance’, University of Surrey, School of Arts and Department of Computing 2 – 4 September 2013
3 Merce Cunningham, Changes: Notes on Choreography, movement sequence XXVI
4 Janet Randell, The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms, see Tutorials 2, 3 and 5, and Tasks and Exercises Tutorial 2 Module 10 Section 4, p 225
5 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p 92, Note 38: Thomas B Harrison, quoting Merce Cunningham in “Cunningham: Choreographer devises movements on a Computer”, Anchorage Daily News, February 23, 1992; Merce Cunningham and Computer Technology, Foreword by Merce Cunningham, The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms, CDA 2018
6 Merce Cunningham at 90, [Online Video], 2009, https://youtu.be/2hLljFBQBN0 (Accessed 20 June 2018);
T W Calvert, ‘The Evolution of Software for Dance’;
Merce Cunningham, interviewed by J Rockwell, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts, 2005 [Online paper] https://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/cunningham/ (Accessed 20 June 2018);
T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p89, Note 34: Deborah Jowitt, quoting Merce Cunningham in “He who wields the Mouse”, The Village Voice, New York, 17 March 1992;
p 93, Note 40: Anne Pierce quoting Merce Cunningham in “Cunningham at the Computer”’ Dance/USA Journal Summer 1991 pp14-15; Note 41: Jennifer Dunning quoting Merce Cunningham, in “Dance by the Light of the Tube”, New York Times Magazine, March 1991
7 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p89, Note 34;
p93, Note 40;
Merce Cunningham, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts; Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham Trust, MC Writings, Four Events That Have Led to Large Discoveries [Online paper] https://www.mercecunningham.org/merce-cunningham/mc-writing-text/params/textID/9/ (Accessed 20 June 2018);
Merce Cunningham interview (1995), Manufacturing Intellect, Published May 28 2016 [Online Video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXZuovDYLg0
8 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p82, Note 12: Anne Pierce quoting Merce Cunningham in “Cunningham at the Computer”, Dance USA/Journal, Summer 1991, pp 14-15
9 T W Calvert, ‘The Evolution of Software for Dance’, [Online presentation] 00.14.20.
10 Telegraph Reporters, Stephen Hawking greatest quotes: ‘Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet’, The Telegraph, 14 March 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/03/14/stephen-hawking-greatest-quotes-without-imperfection-would-not/ (Accessed 20 June 2018)
11 Merce Cunningham at 90, [Online Video], 2009, https://youtu.be/2hLljFBQBN0 (Accessed 20 June 2018);
T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p89, Note 33: Joseph H Mazo, Quoting Merce Cunningham in “Quantum Leaps”, The Record, Bergen Country, New Jersey, 15 March 1992, p E-8;
Note 34;
Merce Cunningham, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts; Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham Trust, MC Writings, Four Events That Have Led to Large Discoveries;
12 Merce Cunningham at 90, [Online Video], Merce Cunningham’s Digital Dance, Studio 360, [Podcast] https://www.wnyc.org/story/161254-merce-cunninghams-digital-dance/ 23 Mar 2002, Originally aired: June 9, 2001;
Merce Cunningham: Talking Dance, Sage Cowles, Walker Art Centre, [Online Video] July 27 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGjzL75eVa8;
T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p89, Note 33
13 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p89, Note 33
14 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p97, Note 49: Thomas B Harrison quoting Merce Cunningham in ‘Cunningham: Choreographer devises movements on a computer”, Anchorage Daily News, Sunday 23 February 1992
15 T Schiphorst, Merce Cunningham: Creative Elements, Choreography and Dance: An international journal, Volume 4, Part 3, p93, Note 41,
Merce Cunningham at 90, [Online Video] 2009; Merce Cunningham, Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and the Arts
16 Merce Cunningham and Computer Technology, Foreword, The Tutorial Guide to DanceForms, Janet Randell, CDA, 2019

The Fusion of Digital Technology & Dance