John Cage and dancing
Every once in a while, something about John Cage comes up on the news or in conversation, and I remember how mind-blowing his ideas were to me as a dancer and choreographer when I was just starting to dance.
While I was studying for my M.A. in Dance, before I started dancing tango, I took several classes about dance, musicality and choreography that were required for my degree. I also took a special seminar on John Cage and Merce Cunningham. John Cage’s avant garde music in the 1940s and 1950s involved pieces for prepared piano (putting things on the piano strings so different sounds were played); pieces where composition decisions were made by chance; and one piece of music where no sound is played by the instrument at all. We spent a lot of time making dances based on chance, dances in silence, etc., but I had forgotten about it until this morning.
TED Talks and tango
Today, I tuned into TED Talks while I did some wool prep and spinning, and there was one about sound. As I have been teaching musicality as a main focus of my online Zoom group classes, I spend a lot of time thinking about music, sound and dance, so I tuned in. The speaker said “John Cage” and I was hooked. It’s not long, so take a moment and listen to it.
Here is your tango homework
OK, now go outside (or if that’s too public/weird for you, inside), and play the piece again, just dancing along to what you hear. I just did this, and it’s amazing.
What did you hear? What did you dance?
If you are in my class today, you are now fore-warned what will will be adding to the planned class :-)