Roger Copeland

The only extant book-length, critical monograph about Cunningham's work, I recommend this to dance enthusiasts interested in a thoughtful orientation of his dances in the context of dance and art history. It primarily investigates the way that Cunningham's work rejected the primitivist heat of modern dance before him (see Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Doris Humphrey) in favor of a detached style that raised questions about the truths modern dance purported to express. Copeland compares show more this rejection to the way two of Cunningham's frequent collaborators, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, repudiated the conventions of Abstract Expressionism in visual art.

In developing his thesis, Copeland explores and ultimately illuminates a number of individual dances from Cunningham's prolific career, highlighting their rejection of instinct, their classicism, fragmentation, engagement with new technologies, and reflection of the rhythms of urban life in the second half the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. He even argues that Cunningham's work has a frequently-neglected political dimension, citing the remarkable level of perceptual freedom it offers the viewer. His erudite analyses draw on the work of a broad range of artists and thinkers, from Barthes to Brecht to Gertrude Stein, and as a result, he is able to situate Cunningham in a cultural context much broader and richer than the relatively small world of dance. I came away from the book with a substantially enriched understanding of dance history, certainly, but also of art history and even, to a more limited extent, American and human history.

My only reservations are that, (1) in the dance trenches, Copeland is a fierce Cunningham partisan, and his tone can turn unnecessarily sarcastic and clever when discussing other forms of expression, and (2) the book's breadth is occasionally at the expense of depth; at several points, exciting developments in his argument are abruptly dropped before they feel fully fleshed out. As a rule, though, his snarkiness is subordinate to a surprisingly conversational tone that is inviting to the non-dance specialist, and the observations and connections he makes are eye-opening and fruitful. show less