Squaregame video.

Format:

Video

Contributor:

Cunningham, Merce, choreographer.

Kosugi, Takehisa, 1938- composer.

Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Series:

Academic Video Online

Standardized Title:

Squaregame (Choreographic work : Cunningham)

Language:

No linguistic content

Genre:

Dance.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (26 minutes)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Merce Cunningham Trust, 1976.

Language Note:

In English.

Original language in English.

System Details:

data file

Summary:

As its title suggests, this playful piece is much like a game. Squaregame was first performed on a surface resembling an athletic court. The set design by Mark Lancaster consisted of a white floor cloth surrounded by bands of green Astroturf - otherwise the stage was bare - and the costumes were practice clothes, with the dancers dressed in sweatpants and ankle socks. The duffel bags that defined the space played a part in the choreography: inactive dancers would sit on or against them on the sidelines, as if they were on the sidelines at a sporting event. A recurring theme was that of people hanging on to others and being carried or dragged along by them. This can be seen several times throughout the dance, as in when one of the male dancers lunged from side to side, doing a series of contractions, with a female dancer hanging on to his waist. In the finale, the dancers toss the duffel bags back and forth before assembling in a tableau resembling a family portrait. Squaregame was the first Cunningham dance for which Takehisa Kosugi wrote the score. S.E. Wave/E.W. Song explores the use of "ready-made" materials consisting of several pre-existing pieces of music and text that are then manipulated by the musicians. Two children's songs are used in sections for violin and melodica, wherein the musicians play notes from the songs backwards, out of order, and in other non-standard manners. Similarly, pre-existing texts are explored using experimental methods in the vocal sections. During performance, the instrumental performances and vocalizations are treated with delay and phaser effects of varying densities, and spatialized to created a 6-channel soundscape. Cunningham conceived Squaregame while on tour with a video adaptation in mind. The resulting Squaregame Video was created during a period of prolific video explorations in collaboration with director Charles Atlas. The choreography fit in a square area measured upon the larger rectangular space of the stage that was then transposed to the Westbeth studio for filming. Shot on a recently acquired black and white video camera, the film is the only document of Cunningham performing the dance with the original cast.

Participant:

Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Notes:

Title from resource description page (viewed March 07, 2017).

Recorded Merce Cunningham Studio.