Cage & Cunningham Collaboration

"Music and dance are independent of each other," proclaimed composer John Cage (1912–1992) and choreographer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009). Their collaboration spanned 50 years and shaped both new music and modern dance in the second half of the 20th century.

In order not to favor either art form, they developed the most extreme form of relationship between dance and music: their independence. This innovative type of interdisciplinary collaboration is described here as the Cage & Cunningham Collaboration. It is based on the independent creation of composition and choreography, which are not synchronized by the artists and are not linked by narrative elements. In the performance, the two parts—dance and music—come together and are experienced by the audience as a single performance.

Whether music and dance are truly independent or whether composition and choreography are in fact interdependent because they use the same methods, e.g., random operations, is examined in detailed analyses.

In addition to Cage's compositions for Cunningham's choreographies, commissioned works by Morton Feldman and Pauline Oliveros are also analyzed.

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