Merce Cunningham Beach Bird Analysis

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Recommended: Understanding Merce Cunningham's Dance

Discuss the unpredictability of chance procedures and how the movements discovered are often unusual and away from your comfort zone. Does the fact you are leaving everything to chance make you not a choreographer, or is it still choreography because you are creating?

Merce Cunningham produced Beach Birds using his chance procedures. Vaughan (2013) stated that “Cunningham dissected the human body with a computer mouse, breaking down the simplest gesture into composite parts.” Suggesting that the choreography would be completely unpredictable even to the choreographer himself.

It is debatable that chance procedures could have changed the identity of the work for example; the sharp movements could become soft giving the performance a complete change in appearance. However would Beach Birds become so popular if it was a different …show more content…

The effect they have on an audience fluctuates on what the audiences themselves are searching for to be entertained or to be shown a work process.

William Forsyth’s definition of choreography: Speir.S (2011) “Organising bodies in space”… “Organising bodies with other bodies”... “Organising a Body with other bodies in an environment that is organised” He is supportive to the fact that both approaches of choreography are relevant, as they both abided by the above statements. The only differing factor being one outcome will be known and the other will be unpredictable.

I don’t believe that one method makes a creator more of a choreographer than another, but it is what you do with the movement material you accumulate. Also how you choose present it that determines how well you choreograph. In the past my personal experience I would of only used material that I came up with in my mind, however since being introduced to chance methods I now choreograph using a mixture of the two

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