Critical Correspondence

MRPJ#14/The Legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn (1928-1996): Extras

Dunn educated an army of dancers to combat the cultural paradigm of the split between mind and body. Dunn gave credence to the body’s voice, giving it control of choreography. “Some people expect their bodies to be empty,” he reflected. “However, we are all filled with movement. The body choreographs.” Through language, Robert Dunn helped bring consciousness into our previously “unknowable” bodies.” –From The Way the Mind Works with the Body by Jeni Frazee.

Movement Research Performance Journal #14 – The Legacy of Robert Ellis Dunn gathered an exquisite collection of personal memoirs, reflections, photographs and historical recounts of Dunn’s teaching beginning with the Judson years, but continuing throughout his life across the whole United States. We choose to republish an excerpt taken from Dunn’s journal that had been previously published by Contact Quarterly in lieu of Guest Editor Wendy Perron’s exhaustive historical introduction. For our main feature, we reproduce Al Carmines’ recount of the early Judson concert, In the Congregation of Art. That aspect of the piece has been told many times, but Carmines — then Assistant Minister of the congregation and in charge of the Church’s arts program — offers a refreshing view of the effect the Judson era had on the congregation itself. In addition, his awareness of and the position he takes with regards to the press, and what he calls “the younger” (in this case, Kenneth King and Meredith Monk), also adds special interest.

As it happened the social changes of the 60s were underway, not least of which, for us, was the change of dance critics at The New York Times from John Martin to Allen Hughes. The performance was reviewed. Although the review was equivocal, and the performance uneven and very long, for the next several years Judson Church was viewed as a hotbed of dance revolution (which to some degree it was, but the perception was more suasive than the fact). According to those who write our dance history, the “Judson Period” was the birth of (that lugubrious term) Post-modern dance. Whether you buy that construction or not, Judson, improbably, became a symbol of new directions in dance.

It is important not to suppose that these results were aims of Robert Dunn’s. Dunn proposed composition problems to be solved in dance. He allowed us to ramble, argue and turn the class away from his direction. He proposed, and waited. He wanted us to fill in the blanks—and looking back, I suspect we were those blanks. — From RE Dunn, by Steve Paxton.