Cunningham-Cage
Richard Kostelanetz POBox 444, Prince St., New York, NY 10012-0008, rkostelanetz@bigfoot.com PROPOSAL for a double biography of Cunningham/ Cage: Lives In Collaboration My theme is that they were one of the most innovative and productive couples in the arts--the avant-garde equivalent of, say, Lunt-Fontaine in Broadway theater. In five decades of nearly continuous productivity, they made not only apart but together a large body of major work and a model of artistic collaboration that remains with us. Rather than deal with their individual achievements (and individual biographies), I would focus upon their times together; so that nearly all pages would contain both their names. As I now envision it, the book would begin with an introduction recalling their first meeting in Seattle in 1938. The remainder would be devoted to such episodes in their collaboration as the following: 1) Their first New York recital together in 1944 2) The Seasons 3) The early tours of the Merce Cunningham Company 14) 16 Dances for a Soloist and a Company of Three (1951), which was not only their first evening-length work but Cunninghamšs first to employ chance operations 5) Black Mountain College, including Theater Piece (1952) 6) The first New York season at the end of 1952 7) Antic Meet, which Cunningham identifies among the first where "we could not count on the sounds as cues"; it has frequently been revived 8) The 1964 world tour 9) Variations V (1965) 10) Un Jour ou Deux, where they were jointly commissioned by Parisian sponsors 11) "Event for Television" and the development of their video dance/art 12) Joint teaching, as exemplified by their participation in the International Dance Course for Professional Choreographers and Composers in England (1981) 13) Roaratorio (1985) The conclusion begins with Cagešs resigning as music director and ends with Cunningham discovering Cagešs terminally ailing body. I would expect to draw upon my 1984 appreciation of the Cunningham-Cage esthetic [reprinted in On Innovative Music(ian)s], documentation already published, and interviews with participants. The book would be 100,000 words long. Rather than footnotes, it would have a bibliographical afterword identifying sources. I hope the book would be appreciated as not only a definitive contribution to the growing Cage and Cunningham literature but as a model of the double biography. This hould take no more than five years to do--maybe less, if sufficiently supported. It is also a book that only I could write.