You now have four minutes and thirty three seconds to read this.

“Setting a process going which has no necessary beginning, no middle, no end, and no section.” My first interaction with John Cage surely replicates the musician’s general reputation. Four minutes and thirty three seconds of music like I had never heard it before. Well, in the beginning I couldn’t hear it at all. Later in his interview on His Own Music, source for my opening quote, Cage mentions the immanence of Art in our daily routines.

Delving into a project like the Cunningham Legacy at Yale is the precious opportunity to be immersed in a unique artistic Universe. An aficionada of art history, my admiration for Post-War and Contemporary art has been growing stronger and stronger since the first sparks of my adolescent mutinies. Rauschenberg, John Cage, Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham: the quartet. I veneered them as the intellectual cradle of an artistic revolution. Iconoclasts! Idealist realists! Pure creation and true artists! This semester has given me the perfect excuse to push my curiosity further and actually be a part of their world. It is a gift. Last semester the Gagosian Galleries hosted an exposition of Rauschenberg’s private collections. It was constructed so as to understand the inspiring and avant-garde artistic environment in which he had lived and created. Just like our project this exposition was another way of entering the artist’s universe.

What I am trying to explain is that “one does not simply” walk into the Dance Studio, rehearse for Roaratorio, and then walk out and back into student routine. Merce Cunningham is a whole, the symbol of an artistic movement: in participating in the perpetuation of his legacy, I feel drawn into his universe.

As I weekly discover more and more about the artist I cannot help but feel overwhelmed by the general logic and sense of purpose that I find in everything related to him. Every detail of Cunningham’s existence and thoughts constructs around an undeniable thread of sensibility and consciousness, towards his artistic creation. I’ve used many big words, and still can’t explain what I feel: maybe because this where the problem lies. Cunningham’s artistic universe is self-explanatory and his works are an expression of this flowing sense of authenticity.

There is no break in Cunningham’s creation, no fundamental rupture it seems. This is where I bring music in. As I write I am listening to John Cage’s “In a Landscape” on repeat. It took me twenty minutes before realizing there had not once been a break in the flow of the music. As said in the opening, John cage creates music that has neither beginning nor end. It simply exists, without ever properly starting or ending? A circle has neither beginning nor end; it is the symbol of infinity. In light of this, of Cage’s comments on art in daily routine and of his piece 4:33, John Cage seems to imply that music is everywhere all the time. Of art being an ongoing creation.

This conception of music is definitely an issue I have had to face in working with the Merce Cunningham Project. This notion that each element of my surrounding is connected to another has challenged my perception of the creative/artistic process. I am indeed much more aware of my environment now. At the beginning of the project “I danced to silence”. Now, my whole approach has changed and I have become aware of those with whom I share my movements and space. Henceforth I dance to breathing, feet shuffling on the ground, I take cues…
I had never necessarily realized it, but when dancing to music I concentrate on the music alone, and count. Each dancer “dances to the music” and has a personal relationship with this music. However the individual dancer does not consciously share the act of dancing with the others.

When we do Cunningham’s group dances at rehearsal I have at times felt as though there were electricity running through the dancers: and in this way connecting us. I was told that Merce Cunningham could spend hours looking down into New York’s crowded streets. I feel as though Cunningham has recreated these scenes in his group choreographies. And indeed, there is something galvanizing in walking with a crowd. The marching and the pace propel you along and you participate in this deafening pounding that starts to resonate in you. The crowd/group/mass is animated by an intention and become bound together by this perpetual rhythm.

It is this realization that made a first impact in my life outside of the Dance Studio and actually changed my approach to and perception of my surroundings. I walk around with big green headphones. I already knew it was dangerous (accidents involving pedestrians wearing the devices have tripled in recent years!) but at that moment I suddenly realized how completely disconnected I was from my surroundings, and from people. So I decided to take the headphones off and listen to the music that was already out there, all around me. For the first time in a long time, I walked with purpose to my next class! I felt a connection and silently shared something inexplicably valuable with my surroundings.

In dancing without an external source of music, Cunningham, I think, makes a beautiful claim about our relationships with people, with our surroundings and the world. Cunningham values the music within, the intuitive music. Immanent. As I said earlier Cunningham is a whole. The spectator is pulled into his universe, and then haunted by it, because there is an overwhelming sense of order and inevitability in it. I think this comes from the important distinction between immanence and transcendence in the artist’s creation. Cunningham’s “world” is immanent to his person and this is why everything in it is so self-explanatory and logically intertwined. Immanence in Cunningham’s work is about occupying space, embodying your internal music. In this process the spark of self-definition brings the dancer into existence.