<< Front page Arts March 12, 2004

Roger Copeland signs books

Theatre and Dance professor Roger Copeland will be holding a lecture and book signing this coming Friday at The Oberlin Bookstore to publicize his recently published book, Merce Cunningham: The Modernizing of Modern Dance. This book, a work over twenty years in the making, chronicles the career of choreographer Merce Cunningham and his artistic collaborations with John Cage, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. With Merce Cunningham as the starting point of a “sea change,” as Copeland said, of modern art and the culture at large, the book maps the evolution of several mediums and their effects on artistic modernization.

In the past, Copeland has written dance and theater reviews for The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Theatre. In 1999, he received the Stagebill award for the best article on theatre in the United States. Praised by his peers as “a stylish writer and a hard-core analytical thinker,” Copleand has received wide recognition for his recent publication. His book has been hailed as the best and “by far the most probing” work on this particular movement and “a must read for anyone who has an avid interest in contemporary culture.”

While currently teaching theatre history and critique here at Oberlin College, Copeland is also in the process of writing and directing his first feature-length film, Unrecovered, which depicts the lives of three individuals in the aftermath of 9/11. His publication on Merce Cunningham is not only Copeland’s first major book, it is also the first full-length account devoted to Cunningham and his modern art peers.

It is no secret that Cunningham has been acclaimed as the prototypical choreographer of his time and was one of the first great artists to combine digital technology with dance. More recently, Cunningham has received attention for his collaboration with popular music giants Radiohead and Sigur Ros.

Copeland draws from 60 years of Cunningham’s career and expounds on the scope of his influence and variety of his works. He begins by exploring the artistic transformations in the 1960s and goes even further to examine dance in the context of post-9/11 America.

Copeland first encountered the works of Cunningham in 1968, traveling to New York City to see a performance featuring Cunningham and his collaborators. As a freshman at Northwestern University, Copeland had a strong interest in the artistic movements occurring in New York as well as the innovative changes in modern dance.

At the time, Martha Graham was the quintessential modern dancer, originating and popularizing the flowing, free-form expressionistic style commonly associated with the art. Copeland, however, was not impressed. It wasn’t until he discovered Cunningham that he felt dance was truly being moved to a new form and was finally being modernized.

Before Cunningham, modern dance sought primarily to find the “origins” of inspiration and looked inward to their own unconscious or “primitive” nature to extract their art. Cunningham revolutionized the art by drawing not from instinctual and personal experience, but instead from randomized and “chance operations.” This chaotic and randomized method expressed an intellectual rather than sensitive expression and examined the detached and external world of technology and the present-day society. Cunningham’s work was not natural, but rather “urban” and truly modern. To quote Copeland, Cunningham’s choreography “celebrates the speed, fragmentation, simultaneity of stimuli, and peculiar perceptual demands unique to the contemporary city.”

Using the techniques of his partner, Cage and Cunningham, along with designers Jaspers and Rauschenberg, created elaborate performances using dance, music and decor which were all randomized and then fused together for a chaotic, brilliant final work. Often the various groups in the collaboration would have no access to the other groups until opening night of the performance.

What resulted was a unique and totally remarkable experience each night. Cage and Cunningham became famous for their use of dice and other “chance methods” to orchestrate the movements of the dance and music. The movements themselves were based largely on traditional ballet, but the choreography came solely from his random methodology. This is what distinguished Cunningham as a modernized classical performer.

The lecture and book signing to follow will take place this coming Friday, March 19 at 3 p.m. in the Oberlin Bookstore. It is just one of the many talks Copeland will be presenting on his book tour, which has taken him across the country and soon on to London and Paris. Most recently, Copeland addressed an audience of artists, critics, and theorists at New York City’s Lincoln Center. This talk is a unique opportunity for any students of modern theater and dance to learn more about Roger Copeland and his book.


 
 
   

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