Analysing Another Piece of Choreography

(Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 2013)

"Exchange"- Merce Cunningham

I think in this piece Merce Cunningham is trying to portray, different people and in their own ways to show no one is the same and that we all do things differently like the dancers do in this clip. I think the movements are supposed to be strange and weird along with what they are wearing to further depict no one is "normal" and everyone is themselves, not someone else.

I think in this section the choreographer has used the dancers very well, as there is a mixture of men and women, all moving around the stage in creative and innovative ways, this creates a busy and confusing effect a bit like the effect of life and this represents how there is always a lot of people around you doing things you aren't doing, and would never do. However even though they aren't doing the exact same thing at the same time, they are moving with a similar style and some repeated movements which I think also portrays equality which says that yes everyone is their own personality but we are are all equal in worth.

The music in this piece is quite intense and strange as its not particularly got any specific beats or melodies, however the movement the dancers do to it is very messy and random yet continuous throughout. The song has a lot of odd noises that is repetitive and noisy, and the dancers moving around the stage in their unusual ways, makes the stage look busy, which matches the thick textured music behind it. This does then link into what I believe the theme is, as the busyness of both the music and the dancer’s movements again highlights the large amount of people with their own individual personalities.

I think the choreographer used a creative process where, they thought of individual small movements and increased the size of them or made them more interesting by starting with a small idea and progressing from there into actual steps and motifs.

There is a lot of repetition in this piece which could link back to our piece as the beginning is the same as the end and there is a few moments in our dance In which we repeat certain movements again or bring back some from earlier on in the dance.

Bibliography

Merce Cunningham Dance Company, 2013. Exchange- Dance. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjVCLdwTtZA> [Accessed 1 December 2020].