VORTEX celebrates JOHN CAGE with former dancers of the MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY – BLAIR SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Michael Holland, Artistic Director
“ ‘Downtown’ ain’t just for New Yorkers anymore.” –Nashville Scene
VORTEX celebrates
JOHN CAGE with former dancers of the
MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY
John Cage and Merce Cunningham, 1968.
Photographer: Jack Mitchell. Photo courtesy of the John Cage Trust.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 2012 – BLAIR SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Witness history. Make history. Join VORTEX and Artistic Director Michael Holland in the centennial birthday celebration of John Cage and his 50-year collaboration with Merce Cunningham. Rare archival photographs, audio clips, and film footage let Cage and Cunningham speak to you as VORTEX performs with former members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, just off their international farewell Legacy Tour.
PLUS: COMPANY ROSE, Nashville, Tennessee – Marsha Barsky & Erin Law, choreographers.
Nashville’s Company Rose joins the program in a groundbreaking restaging of the ‘lost’ Cage work, Fads and Fancies in the Academy, Created by Cage with 1940s modern dance pioneer, Marian Van Tuyl, it was originally subtitled A Gentle Satire on Progressive Education. For the first time since the original WWII performances, Company Rose and VORTEX reunite Cage’s uncharacteristically rhapsodic program music with choreography created by Marsha Barsky and Erin Law, informed by film footage of Van Tuyl’s original choreography and personal notes.
1:30 – 5:00— MINI CAGE SYMPOSIUM, CHORAL REHEARSAL HALL
Musicologist David W. Patterson, performance artist Amelia Winger-Bearskin, composer Stan Link, film scholar Jonathan Rattner, and Joanna Harris, archivist of the Marian Van Tuyl estate, showcase Cage’s work in music, art, dance, and film.
7:00 PM—CAGE MUSICIRCUS, INGRAM LOBBY & PLAZA
(You won’t hear a thing. You’ll hear everything!)
7:40 PM—PRE-CONCERT TALK, INGRAM HALL
8:00 PM—VORTEX CONCERT, INGRAM HALL
ADMISSION IS FREE – RECEPTION FOLLOWS THE PERFORMANCE
PRECEDING EVENTS:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21:
11:30 – 12:30
HAPPENING AT THE BAKER BUILDING
(LIVE!) ELEVATOR MUSIC designed to surprise and engage; performed on found objects and conventional instruments.
FRIDAY, MARCH 23:
11:30-1:00 PM
HAPPENING AT THE COMMONS
Guerilla performances featuring multiple record players, percussion, modern dance, Chinese drummers & dancers, spoken word and more!
MONDAY, MARCH 26:
11:30-1:00 PM
HAPPENING AT SARRATT HALL
Guerilla performances featuring multiple record players, percussion, modern dance, Chinese drummers & dancers, spoken word and more!
PLUS: RANDOM EVENTS
CROSSWALK DANCES – Spontaneous dance and music coming to a busy street corner near you!
THURSDAY, MARCH 29:
3:00 PM— PANEL DISCUSSION, TURNER RECITAL HALL
REVOLUTIONARIES IN THE ACADEMY!
John Cage and Merce Cunningham: A conversation on Form, Composition, and Creativity
A dialogue on the intersection of music and dance, featuring Jennifer Goggans former dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Dr. Michael Slayton, chair of the Blair School of Music Composition Department, Joy Calico, Associate Professor of Musicology at Blair, and Michael Holland, Artistic Director of VORTEX.
5:00-6:30 PM—DANCE STUDIO, MEMORIAL GYMNASIUM
CUNNINGHAM DANCE TECHNIQUE
Former Merce Cunningham dancer, Jennifer Goggans, leads this class focused on the dance technique developed by Merce Cunningham.
FRIDAY, MARCH 30:
5:00 – 6:30 PM—DANCE STUDIO, MEMORIAL GYMNASIUM
CUNNINGHAM DANCE TECHNIQUE
CHANCE, CREATIVITY, & CUNNINGHAM TECHNIQUE
Former Merce Cunningham dancer, Jennifer Goggans, leads this class on the intersection of Cunningham Technique with creativity and chance operations.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CALL (615) 322-7651
Support for this program provided by a Creative Campus Innovation Grant. Additional support provided by: Mark Wait, Dean, Blair School of Music; Frank Wcislo, Dean of The Ingram Commons; Sandra Stahl, Office of the Dean of Students; and by JoEl Logiudice, Office of Creative Engagement. Blair thanks the Hutton Hotel for generously providing guest artist accommodations.
About Blair Percussion VORTEX
Blair Percussion VORTEX performs historically relevant and strikingly contemporary repertoire. It embraces the free spirit of invention that animated and informed the early writers for percussion who broke rules, defied ingrained traditions, and crossed disciplines, giving voice to an art that could speak to the modern age. Following John Cage’s dictum “Percussion music is revolution,”VORTEX enthusiastically courts composers, actors, engineers, choreographers, filmmakers, lighting designers—artists of all stripes—to form enduring partnerships that mirror real-world performance opportunities.
VORTEX is as much about a way of approaching performance as it is the repertoire performed. Concerts are highly curated, taking into account the sum of the visual, dramatic, and musical parts. Recent hybrid collaborations include the theatrical adaptation of The Tell-tale Heart for percussion and actor, live accompaniment of silent film, and several commissioned percussion works. The roster of artistic collaborators includes engineer/musician John Harrison, electric violinists Tracy Silverman and Daniel Bernard Roumain, actor Jim Lovensheimer, electronica/remix artist Brad Bowden, composer Jeffery Briggs, world-renowned CRASH founder and composer Mary Ellen Childs, and in 2012, former dancers of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
VORTEX is bold, innovative, and cutting edge, regularly crossing the line between conventional chamber music and unexpected theater. Students in this group bring strong percussion performance skills, an eagerness to take on daring, new musical challenges, and an interest in being prepared as 21st century musicians. In 2010, VORTEX was named “Best Next-Wave Student Music Ensemble” by Nashville Scene arts critic Russell Johnston.
A high quality video recording of this program is available for viewing within the Wilson Music Library, Blair School of Music. Be sure to ask for the archival copy.
Cage Musicircus
Cage Musicircus precedes the 8pm concert. Over 70 performers, including musicians, dancers, actors, jugglers, Chinese lions, and spoken word artists, converged on the plaza in a spectacular simultaneous improvised performance. Below is a 10 minute clip of the larger event.
Read what people are saying about the Spring 2012 Cage / Cunningham / VORTEX event.
(Video by Tony Youngblood)
Michael Holland, Blair School of Music
Beginning in mid-March, Blair Percussion VORTEX and Artistic Director Michael Holland, led Vanderbilt University in a celebration marking the centenary of American composer John Cage and his work with choreographer Merce Cunningham. The innovation grant brings this project beyond the Blair campus to enable all of Vanderbilt to join in the festivities, manipulating recorded sound, images, film, and movement in a series of ‘happenings’—playful, spontaneous encounters that took place throughout the broader Vanderbilt campus. No experience necessary!
Former dancers from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company—Cage’s lifelong collaborators—also led students in a series of movement workshops and performed with VORTEX on the Ingram Stage at the Blair School, April 1 at 8:00 p.m. This represented a last opportunity to see Cunningham-trained dancers, as the company will disband following their final New York performance on December 31, 2012.
Partners in the VORTEX project include: Mark Hosford, Art Department; Jonathan Rattner, Film Studies; Kelvin Amburgey and Erin Law, Vanderbilt Dance; Michael Slayton, Bill Wiggins, and Jim Lovensheimer, Blair School of Music. In addition to the Creative Campus innovation grant, co-sponsorship funding was provided by Mark Wait, Dean of the Blair School, JoEl Logiudice, Director, Office of Arts and Creative Engagement, Vanderbilt Dance, and Sandra Stahl, Associate Dean, Office of the Dean of Students.
Michael Holland serves on the music faculty of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music where he is Artistic Director of Blair Percussion VORTEX, a group he describes as “a playground of invention, a virtual sandbox inviting actors, dancers, musicians, engineers — artists of all stripes — to ‘play’ in the sand.” VORTEX was named 2010’s “Best Next-Wave Student Music Ensemble” by Nashville Scene arts critic Russell Johnston, who closed the citation with, “‘Downtown’ ain’t just for New Yorkers anymore.”
Reflections from the Producer
When measured by audience diversity, student and staff engagement, and sheer historic significance, the Cage/Cunningham Celebration that occurred at Vanderbilt University during the spring semester of 2012 was, by all accounts, an unqualified success. Simply with regard to student engagement, this project brought the creative aesthetic of John Cage and Merce Cunningham to hundreds of students who encountered dancers and musicians in the environments most frequented by students: The Commons and Sarratt Student Center.
Throughout the Vanderbilt community, faculty and student collaboration brought participation from Art, Film Studies, Dance, Theater, Juggling Arts, and Music, creating myriad possibilities for engaging the student body at-large, as well as the community of Nashville. The demographics of the Big Event on April 1st represented a diverse and record-setting audience that ranged from grannies to grade-schoolers.
Some 70 performers participated in the MusiCircus at Ingram Plaza and Lobby. That event, along with happenings staged around the campus, brought students and the community into direct participation with sound collage and improvised movement. The net result was a sense of connection with the performers and with Cage and Cunningham, so that inside the concert hall, the common barriers between performer and audience seemed to dissolve.
In a society dominated by corporate definitions of creative engagement, the Cage/Cunningham Celebration invited ordinary human beings to participate in something non-conventional and extraordinary. That accomplishment is a legacy in and of itself. But the real legacy will be revealed by the degree to which people bring creative (unusual) thinking to daily living. John Cage was never simply “about music.” His was a philosophy about life on a planet that is increasingly pushed to a breaking point. Cage and Cunningham turned the arts world on its head—one performance at a time—when they dispensed with the need for narrative as the connection between music and dance. Large events like this one break the mold and give permission for individuals to think and act in ways not previously considered.
Those interested in reading more about John Cage and Merce Cunningham will find much to peruse in the library. Here is a partial list:
Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years, David Vaughan, editor
Silence: lectures and writings, by John Cage
John Cage: An Anthology, edited by Kostelanetz
Musicage: John Cage muses on words, art, and music.
A Year From Monday; New lectures and writings by John Cage
Conversing with Cage, Richard Kostelanetz
Begin Again: A biography of John Cage by Kostelznetz
John Cage’s Theater Pieces by Fetterman
The Boulez-Cage Correspondence by Pierre Boulez
John Cage: Composed in America, Marjorie Perloff
John Cage (Ex)plained by Kostelanetz
John Cage at 75 by Richard Fleming
The Roaring Silence: John Cage, a Life, by David Revill
Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
By Maria Popova
Videos:
John Cage: A Music Circus
I Have Nothing to Say and I’m Saying It