Comments on: Is Merce a sculptor?

by: Grugs free sample.

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 07:15:33 +0000

Grugs free sample….

Grugs free sample….

by: Anonymous Director

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:11:53 +0000

another intrigueing note on the left trio is that they are all in a fourth position - en face, en avant/derr, and in paraleel - not to mention the use of different levels from both legs, to lunch, to on knee among the three of the dancers.

by: lotta

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 23:32:31 +0000

umm….a leg? help.

by: John

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:43:11 +0000

oh wow, and there’s more!! That silouette pic really brings stuff out. Look at the LEFT leg of the arc-making dancer on the left: What do you see?

by: Anonymous Director

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:55:31 +0000

thanks John - i love your passion for Mercy! enjoy this beautiful day!

by: John

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:16:02 +0000

You’re right, I noticed that too. I’ve posted another shot of that pose. I think the pose calls for a *rounded* back rather than a straight one, in order to echo the arc above. In the new photo posted (the top one) her back is better rounded, (if still asymetrically) yet she is not completely centered under the arc, which would have been sweet.

Look at the way the new photo’s dark exposure highlights the curvatures!! The guy on his back: the line created by his arms continues seamlessly up the right leg of the dancer holding the arc.

by: Lotta Lundgren

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:39:44 +0000

you know all i can think about looking at that photo is how the woman arching her feet in 4th and curving her upper torso in the forefront of the picture is failing to create a straight line with her back and shoulders.

that’s what happens to me when looking at poses/movements that are striving for precise lines and angles. i look at technique. only technique. right, wrong, right, wrong, wrong, right, right! wrong…..

by: John

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 22:19:10 +0000

You said nothing that made me assume you didn’t know these things, and I wasn’t assuming you didn’t know them. What would make you assume I was making such an assumption? :7) I suppose “to clarify” did it; understandably.

I liked you comment, and was not taking issue with it but rather just adding to the string of thoughts concerning that cunning ham and hoping to be informative to whomever might seek information. Obsession and ideation will do that to a person. Oh, that I could bow (from the pelvis to the sternum and then further upwards) to the Almighty Merce!!

To respond to your thought: “what would be bad to keep something bad and maintain chance? is chance really all that bad?” I would tend to agree. But like I said above, I think Cunningham uses chance to get a desired result — that is, to get something beyond his own personal tendencies, not merely to get something produced by chance per se. It’s not that chance is “all that bad”, it’s just that it’s “all that bad” if it turns out to create something that looks bad. In that case he may modify it — perhaps again with another roll of the dice. I don’t know. In sum, my sense is that chance is for Merce a means not an end.

by: Anonymous Director

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:59:17 +0000

what did i say that would show i didnt’ now any of that about merce john? i merely stating an analogy i thought of to Lotta’s comment and the idea that piecing something together on chance is like making snapshots albeit the picture good or bad. I really wasn’t responding to your initial entry and never said anhything that this photo or all of merce’s work was produced on chance, or that he kept everyting he did do on chance if he liked it or not. and i i might add - what would be bad to keep something bad and maintain chance? is chance really all that bad?

hey dude, have a great w/e.

by: John

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 18:28:20 +0000

To clarify un poco, much of Merce’s choreography (especially that of the last 30 years) is not the product of randomness. Rather, the meta-elements are picked at random. So, the order of the different sections of the dance, the different movements of the music, sometimes the timing of phrases, etc. But the actual construction of the phrases, poses, and movements in general are subjected less to the I Ching randomness than they were during the 50s and 60s. The picture above is an example of this difference. The odds of producing that pose using chance are slim.
It’s also interesting to note that Merce didn’t enslave himself to chance when he used it to choreograph. If randomness produced something he really didn’t like, he’d throw it out. He was less devoted to chance as a philosophy than as a tool to help him create art that didn’t suffer from over-personalized stylization; if it turned out not to serve the art, he’d scrap it.