Music and Choreographic Experiments in John Cage and Merce Cunningham’s Projects as an Experience of Reconception of Modern Tradition

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to determine the influence of the “philosophy of the random” on the formation of unique creative methods of the tandem, which ran counter to the aesthetic views of modern choreography; to investigate the key aspects of the interaction of principles, mechanisms of dramaturgy, expressive means of music and choreographic art within the framework of an artistic synthetic phenomenon. The research methodology includes historical and analytical methods, methods of comparative and cultural analysis. The scientific novelty consists in the analysis of the transformation of the North American choreographic tradition of modernism in the joint creative projects of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Using the example of the experimental creative projects of J. Cage and M. Cunningham, the main signs of the interaction of musical and choreographic structures in the field of synthetic artistic practices are clarified. Conclusions. The peculiarities of creative communication of J. Cage and M. Cunningham were determined on the example of joint development and artistic embodiment of experimental aesthetic concepts. In the context of an active creative dialogue with the tradition of North American modern choreography the heredity of aesthetic ideas was revealed, which became the basis for the formation of the artistic principles of the Cage–Cunningham tandem. The value of the aleatoric method as a formative principle of the musical and choreographic whole in joint artistic actions of the aforementioned tandem was analysed. The influence of the “philosophy of the random” on the formation of unique creative methods of tandem, which were contrary to the aesthetic views of modern choreography, was determined. The artistic phenomenon that actualises research intentions and reflections becomes a unique result of intense creative interaction of such polar-organised personalities. The experimental aleatoric practices of J. Cage and M. Cunningham in the synthetic paradigm of musical and choreographic art became an artistic opposition to the strictly regulated concept of story ballet by M. Graham and the relentlessly deterministic system of the dodecaphonic technique of A. Schoenberg. In a broad cultural sense, this can be considered a unique symbiosis between the rational West and the intuitive East.

Keywords: artistic culture of the 20th century; musical work of John Cage; choreography by Merce Cunningham; joint creative project; modern choreographic tradition; synthesis of arts; experiment.