For me, dance was always about the music. Choreography largely depended on the rhythm, feel, and lyrics of the song upon which it was based upon. Especially in popular dance choreography such as in TV shows like SYTYCD, the music drove everything about the dance. Thus, it was a strange experience for me to dance Cunningham’s choreography to… absolute silence. Nothing but the count, and even the counting of the rehearsal director was a gratuitous gift that would not exist under real circumstances. Dancing without music, without even counts? How was it possible? How was the dancer to properly convey the choreographic mood?

That’s when I discovered that there was a mood in the rhythm and beat of the movements. The choreography didn’t require music to emote, because the movements themselves were already so emotive. The tight rhythm of triplets conveyed a much different mood than the more languid rippling of quarter ronde de jambes. Choreography based upon Irish step dancing had a freer and livelier feel than hinges and lunges. Mood was in the movements, not the music.

I had never appreciated modern dance, simply because it struck me as, like one of our rehearsal directors said of some of Merce’s work, more accomplishing a difficult sequence rather than dancing. Dancing, in the full sense of the word, previously, was losing your own self-awareness in the flow of the music. The music carried the movements until the dancer did not quite exist except as a vehicle for the music. That is probably why modern dance struck me as so strange at first. Now I realize that the dancer can lose him or herself in simply the movements, as well, because in Cunningham’s choreography, the movements are the music.