Research Catalog

Title

Interview with Robert Ellis Dunn [sound recording].

Author

Dunn, Robert Ellis.

Publication

1970.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• McDonagh, Don.
• Joseph and Ida Liskin Foundation. fnd

Description

2 sound discs (ca. 114 min.): digital; 4 3/4 in.

Summary

• Disc 1 (ca. 64 min.). Robert Dunn speaks with Don McDonagh about his involvement in dance, including working as a rehearsal pianist for Martha Graham; Louis Horst as a teacher; chance and indeterminacy; the composition workshop he and John Cage taught [at the Merce Cunningham Studio], including the workshop's performance at Judson Memorial Church; the nature of the assignments; how he came to teach the composition course; the composition course he taught at the Boston Conservatory of Music; more on the workshop he taught with Cage, including some of the students [short gap]; briefly, Ruth Emerson; more on the students, including their backgrounds; Robert Rauschenberg and his participation in the workshop; Dunn's approach to the performance space at Judson Memorial Church; describes a work Lucinda Childs created for the workshop; how the workshop came to perform at Judson Memorial Church; Jill Johnston; Horst's attitude toward Cunningham; Steve Paxton's anxiety-provoking choreography; [ends abruptly].
• Disc 2 (ca. 50 min.). Robert Dunn speaks with Don McDonagh about the first dance performance at Judson Memorial Church [he begins by reading a description, possibly from a review, of how the evening's program started] including the absence of any overt religious content; [reads further from the putative review]; the choice of program through consensus; Steve Paxton's role in obtaining the use of Judson Memorial Church as a performance space; Merce Cunningham's choreography and the proscenium stage [short gap]; Simone Forti, including her improvisations and a dance about an onion; her personality when younger; the openness of the composition workshop; the importance composers, e.g., Louis Horst and John Cage, have played in modern dance's development; the influence of the Judson Dance Theater on ballet; his analysis of George Balanchine's ballet Agon; reasons Giselle is his favorite ballet; [short gap]; Louis Horst , including Dunn's view that he was an impediment to Graham's further development; the problem of what to call the kind of dance Merce Cunningham and Jimmy (James) Waring create, including Yvonne Rainer's suggestion of the term postmodern dance; Waring as a choreographer and as a dancer; certain details regarding the composition classes; his view that the Judson Dance Theater was partly the work of the semi-silent generation; the lack of financial resources.

Donor/Sponsor

Oral history archive.

Subjects

• Audiotapes > Dunn, R
• Dunn, Robert Ellis
• Waring, James
• Cage, John
• Forti, Simone
• Judson Dance Theater
• Merce Cunningham Studio, New York
• Judson Memorial Church (New York, N.Y.)
• Music and dance

Note

• Interview with Robert Ellis Dunn conducted by Don McDonagh on March 28, 1970 in New York City.
• Sound quality ranges from fair to poor. The voice of the interviewee is so soft as to frequently be almost unintelligible. The recording is also marred by occasional erroneous noise.
• Open as of August 22, 2012.

Funding (note)

• Preservation was funded with a gift from the Joseph and Ida Liskin Foundation.

Source (note)

• Don McDonagh

Call Number

*MGZTL 4-2507

OCLC

311800512

Author

Dunn, Robert Ellis. Interviewee

Title

Interview with Robert Ellis Dunn [sound recording].

Imprint

1970.

Funding

Preservation was funded with a gift from the Joseph and Ida Liskin Foundation.

Local Note

Dubbing master: *MGZTD 4-2507 nos. 1-2

Archive original: *MGZTCO 3-2507 nos. 1-2

Source

Gift; Don McDonagh, 2007. NN-PD

Local Subject

Audiotapes -- Dunn, R.

Added Author

McDonagh, Don. Interviewer

McDonagh, Don. Donor

Joseph and Ida Liskin Foundation. Funder

Research Call Number

*MGZTL 4-2507 [sound disc]