I wouldn't want to litter this blog with lies and vitiate its veracity. The turpitude of lying to you would certainly give you reason to question my morals!
Anyway, sorry to post this so late, but here are some more vocab words.
I wanted to tell you a little more about the example I talked about in class of the American modern dance legend Merce Cunningham.
When Merce Cunningham was born in 1919, the most popular style of dance was ballet. Urbane members of the upper class would get all dressed up and vaunt their elaborate jewelry and fur coats when they went to view the ballet. They expected to see a narrative story take place on stage such as Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet. Ballet was pretty, understandable, and elaborate. Although these people revered ballet as the ideal form of dance and expression, Merce Cunningham believed that dance should be stripped of its narrative and musical forms. He believed that ballet, as an art form, was too turgid, bursting at the seems with excessive meaning, costumes, and classical music. This move toward simplicity lead by Cunningham, was an untenable idea for many traditional dance critics at the time. They were not open to accepting the avante-garde.
So there you have it...a small background of Merce Cunningham. Below is a link to a video of one of his more popular works, Points In Space. Although he recently died (in 2009), Cunningham's work is ubiquitous in the dance community. Merce himself actually dances in this video. His solo begins at around 4.5 minutes. His company still performs internationally. Enjoy this clip. The dancers wear variegated unitards. I won't take umbrage if this type of dancing is not for you. You decide...
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