Issue #14
Spring 1997
The Legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn
This issue, guest edited by Wendy Perron, honors the legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn. As Perron writes in her introduction: "it is fitting that Movement Research honors Dunn's legacy, since it is a direct artistic descendant of the initial wave of postmodern dance (the term was first used by Yvonne Rainer and then by critic/historian Sally Banes). The founding of Movement Research in the late 70s was a response to the diversity of activity spawned by the Judson period, and Dunn's later emphasis on process and improvisation have become cornerstones of Movement Research. In some way, the free Monday nights at Judson Memorial Church, which had stopped presenting dance sometime in the 70s, bring everything full circle."
Editorial team
Wendy Perron - Anya Pryor - Peter Larose
Ad Layout
Julie Atlas Muz
Articles
The Legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn (1928-1996)
30 March 1980 In the fall of 1960, I began a series of four courses (workshops, what have you) in choreography at the Merce Cunningham Studio, then at the corner...
Introduction
In 1960 Robert Dunn was playing piano for classes at several dance studios, including Merce Cunningham's, and he was studying music theory with John Cage at The New School for...
A Magician in the Classroom
Bob was polite and gentlemanly but sometimes he was outrageous, brilliant yet self-doubting, witty, funny and terribly serious. His deep intelligence masked his fragility and he was often misunderstood. He...
In Memoriam
What I remember the most about Bob Dunn's classes was how he encouraged us to look at and talk about what was actually there in someone's work, not what we...
Reflections on the Early Days
Pick up a rock and feel the earth's pull. To me, that's the feel of the aesthetic of the early 60s. What attracted me in Robert Dunn's teaching was his...
In Memoriam
Bob often said with pride, and a chuckle, that he never knew where he was going when he taught. But in looking over notes and listening to our recorded conversations...
Dunn’s Passing Thoughts
In preparing a special issue of Performing Arts Journal last year, Ixirry Quails and I asked a number of noted critics, artists and educators in different fields to comment on...
Whatever You Touch is Touching You
It was, I believe, his first class in making dances. Yvonne Rainer was there, and Simone Forti and Steve Paxton. Bob sat at the piano, but I don't remember him...
In the Congregation of Art (reprint from Dance Scope, Fall-Winter 1967-68)
The Judson Dance Theater came into being in the summer of 1962. I had been Associate Minister of the church for one year, with special responsibility for directing the arts...
Page 6: In Memoriam
Bob Dunn changed the course of dance history although he was too modest and too busy to be aware of it. His graceful, sensitive body and brilliant mind linked the...
Postmodern Prophet
He was a legend of course, for extraordinary reasons, easily approachable and immediately engaging; one could talk with him about anything. I had not studied with him, but the impact...
Remembering Bob Dunn
An earlier version of this article appeared in Dance Central, October 1996, the monthly newsletter of the Vancouver, British Columbia dance community. My first recollections of Bob Dunn are from...
The Natural History of Some of the Ideas I Learned from Robert Dunn
Robert Dunn and I met in the mid-seventies, when we were both teaching at the Dance Notation Bureau. In return for my teaching him a course in Lulu Sweigard's Ideokinesis,...
Page 10: In Memoriam
When I first started to study dancing in 1949, I was aware of only one teacher of choreography, Martha Graham's mentor, Louis Horst, who taught two series of workshops: Pre-Classic...
Movement Research Programs: February - July 1997
RE Dunn
Time is configured for us in many ways: astronomical movements, clocks, calendars. Subjectively we have sensations, suppers, and friends who create our eras, our memories of a time in a...
Dunn Deal
I attended Bob's class twice as a kibitzer, but I remember seeing only one dance there. Of course I saw many dances that came out of his class that were...
Lining Up and Passing Through
A photograph of Bob Dunn hangs in the studio where I work with Wild Space Dance Company. A gift from a close friend, it was taken during one of the...
Page 16: In Memoriam
In 1981, when I was living in Santa Fe, I arranged for Bob Dunn to come out and teach a workshop called “Choreography and Improvisation.” I had been introduced to...
Art with Freedom
The only workshop I attended with Robert Dunn was a revelation to me. To my surprise and delight he asked the students to explore a game structure that was part...
Drive Your Car Around
As I was writing this, I had thought that Robert was alive and I was looking forward to sending him some of these passages. I met Robert through a Movement...
Bobble
The word "Bobble" was Robert Dunn's email name. Though he sported a New York Sanitation Department cap the alleys he cleaned were in the city of movement some rubbish from...
Page 18: In Memoriam
Bob taught at "Alternative Strategies for Moving the Body," a workshop organized by David Appel and Mead Andrews, who also taught in Washington, D.C. in 1988. I was fond of...
Page 19: In Memoriam
I began the Dunn, Dunn classes at the Cunningham studio after they began. Valda Setterfield and I were early married and pregnant. We met dancing with James Waring. The first...
Another Way of Looking
In the early 70s during his studies with Irmgard Bartenieff at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies, Bob Dunn fully embraced the Laban Movement Analysis system, often referring to "Laban...
The Way The Mind Works With the Body
Robert Ellis Dunn hyper-mobilized us. We poured out streams of movement we'd never seen before. He got us hurling through vertical and horizontal space. He talked. And he watched us....
Butterflies Don’t Pin
In the early 80s, as a "barely there" choreographer tracing her aesthetic line to the experimentation of the Judson Dance Theater, I looked up Robert E. Dunn in the phone...
Page 21: In Memoriam
I had no idea Bob could move when I first met him. I certainly didn't suspect that he would want to. My mother and Bob married when I was just...