- Additional Authors
- Found In
- Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection.
- Description
- 2 streaming audio files (92 minutes total) : digital, stereo
- Summary
- Streaming file 1, Jun. 6, 1978: Begins abruptly, Merce Cunningham speaks with David Vaughan about dancing the Sailor's Hornpipe at the age of 10; he speaks about early influences in cinema, local performances, and studying tap dancing with his first dance teacher Mrs. [Maude] Barrett in Centralia, Washington where he grew up; performing with Marjorie Barrett (Maude's daughter) as a teenager at local Grange Halls and schools; he describes some of their acts that included soft shoe, exhibition ballroom, and his specialty solo; he speaks more about Marjorie; his attending Cornish College of the Arts as a theater major and taking dance classes there; reasons that he chose Cornish for college, including his family connection with Mrs. [Nellie] Cornish; his father's support of his attending Cornish to study theater and dance; briefly, his teacher at Cornish, Bonnie Bird; Vaughan shows Cunningham a program from a performance at Cornish; Cunningham speaks about the daily classes he took while at Cornish; briefly, on his theater teacher, [Alexander] Koriansky; briefly, the Graham technique and composition classes he took with Bird; meeting John Cage during his second year and the way Cage taught composition classes; Vaughan lists the works that Cunningham choreographed and co-choreographed while at Cornish: Unbalanced march, Jazz epigram, and Skinny structures; Cunningham speaks about his co-dancer while at Cornish, Dorothy Herrmann [Weston]; he speaks about another friend while at Cornish, Joyce Wike, including an anecdote about Wike's audition for a Cornish scholarship; he speaks briefly about meeting Morris Graves through Wike; more about Bird's composition classes and how the students worked with music; he speaks briefly about Bird's students touring to perform at other colleges in the Pacific northwest; they speak about Bird's Marriage at the Eiffel Tower (1939?); Cunningham speaks about his participation as a percussionist in Cage's percussion concert series, including some of the composers and instruments they played; [brief interruption]; Cunningham speaks about some of the theater productions he performed in while at Cornish; he speaks briefly about dancing in a piece by Lester Horton during his first summer at Mills College for the Bennington School of the Dance summer sessions; briefly, on returning for his second summer at Mills for the Bennington School and dancing in a piece by Charles Weidman; an anecdote on rehearsals with Weidman; while at the summer session, being invited to attend Bennington College as well as to dance with Martha Graham [in her Martha Graham Dance Company]; he tells an anecdote about telling his parents that he was leaving for New York to dance with Graham; his clarity about wanting to leave Cornish for New York; ways that his Cornish tuition was payed; ends abruptly.
- Streaming file 2, Jun. 9, 1978: Merce Cunningham speaks with David Vaughan about moving to New York in the fall of 1939 at the invitation of Martha Graham; taking dance classes with Graham teaching and Ethel Butler demonstrating; performing with the [Martha Graham Dance Company] in December, 1939; his income from teaching at a boy's school until going on tour with the Graham Company; the modern dance performance venues in New York at that time; the Graham Company's sharing a week of performances with the Ballet Caravan; some of the other performances and choreographers he saw at that time, including works by [Antony] Tudor; the payment he recieved from Graham while on tour, impressions of Graham, and his first year in New York; being in residence with the Graham Company at Bennington College in Vermont the following summer; more on dancing with Graham, including brief anecdotes on Graham's works that he performed in: Penitente (1940), Letter to the world (1940), and Punch and the Judy (1941); briefly, taking classes at School of American Ballet and meeting Lincoln Kirstein; an anecdote on being a super[lative] performer in a Ballet Russe production of Petruchka while in Seattle; an anecdote on seeing a Ballet Caravan performance in Seattle; he speaks about ballet teacher Mary Ann Wells and having not studied with her; more on the dance classes, teachers and guest artists at Cornish; more about his taking class at School of American Ballet and his first year with the Graham Company; they speak briefly about his role in Graham's Land be bright (1942) and also in American document (1938); teachers at the School of American Ballet and an anecdote on Joseph Cornell watching ballet classes there; briefly, on the one class he took from George Balanchine; he speaks about becoming dissatisfied with working under Graham while working on her Letter to the world; Cunningham's discontent about the roles that Graham cast Cunningham and Erik Hawkins in for her Deaths and entrances (1943); his solo in Graham's Appalachian spring (1944); his enjoyment of dancing with her despite his disagreement on her artistic vision; briefly, on performing in Boston performances of One touch of [Venus] with choreography by Agnes de Mille; briefly, spaces where he rehearsed his own work in the early years, including at his 17th street loft in New York; he speaks about his correspondence with Cage to compose the music [Credo in us] for his shared concert with Jean Erdman at Bennington College; they speak more about the Bennington concert which included Credo in us (1942); Cunningham speaks about the zarzuela he was the dance director for, The Wind Remains, with music and adaptation by Paul Bowles, at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943; they speak about the 1944 joint concert with Cage of music and dances that consisted of his solos: Totem ancestor, Root of an unfocus, Triple-paced, Tossed as it is untroubled, Unavailable memory of, and, Spontaneous earth; his investigation of a variety of movement in these early dances; ends abruptly.
- Alternative Title
- Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection. Audio materials.
- Subject
- Barrett, Maude, dance teacher
- Barrett, Marjorie, dancer
- Bird, Bonnie, dance teacher
- Cunningham, Merce > Interviews
- Cage, John, composer
- Cage, John
- Cornish, Nellie Centennial, 1876-1956
- Erdman, Jean, choreographer
- Graham, Martha, choreographer
- Weidman, Charles, choreographer
- Weston, Dorothy Herrmann, dancer
- Graham, Martha
- Cunningham, Merce
- Bennington College
- Bennington School of the Dance
- Cornish College of the Arts (Seattle, Wash.)
- Martha Graham Dance Company
- School of American Ballet
- Credo in us (Choreographic work : Cunningham and Erdman)
- Root of an unfocus (Choreographic work : Cunningham)
- Choreography
- Dance > Study and teaching
- Genre/Form
- Interviews.
- Sound recordings.
- Note
- David Vaughan interviews Merce Cunningham, probably in New York, New York, on June 6 and 9, 1978. This interview was created as research for David Vaughan's book, Merce Cunningham: Fifty years (New York, Aperture).
- Title and dates provided by cataloger based on audition and handwritten and typed notes on original container.
- Handwritten and typed notes on original original container: "1. David Vaughan: Interview with Merce Cunningham, 6 June 1978 ; 2. Continued ; 9 June 1978".
- Sound quality is mostly good; at times the interviewee is muffled or speaks away from the recording microphone but is mostly audible.
- Access (note)
- Patrons can access streaming audio only on site at NYPL Research Libraries.
- Source (note)
- Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation
- Linking Entry (note)
- Forms part of the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection.
- Call Number
- *LTC-A 1446
- OCLC
- 913959924
- Author
Cunningham, Merce, interviewee.
- Title
Interview with Merce Cunningham, 1978-06-06/09.
- Production
June 6 and 9, 1978.
- Playing Time
004440 004653
- Type of Content
spoken word
- Type of Medium
audio
- Type of Carrier
audiocassette
online resource
- Digital File Characteristics
audio file
- Event
Recorded in, [New York, New York], 1978 June 6 and 9.
- Restricted Access
Patrons can access streaming audio only on site at NYPL Research Libraries.
- Original Version
Archival original: (1 audio cassette (92 minutes) : analog) in *LTC-A 1446 no. 1.
- Linking Entry
Forms part of the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection.
- Local Note
Transferred from original analog cassette by George Blood Audio on March 25, 2015; two preservation files were created based on the cassette sides.
- Source
Gift; Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation, 2011-2012.
- Connect to:
- Added Author
Vaughan, David, 1924- interviewer.
Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation, donor.
- Added Title
Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection. Audio materials.
- Found In:
Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Collection.
- Research Call Number
*LTC-A 1446