Cage
Four encounters led to great discoveries. The first occurred at the beginning of my collaboration with John Cage, for my solos, when we began to separate music from dance. It was the late 1940s. At the time, we were using what Cage called a “rhythmic structure,” that is, certain spaces of time that, by mutual agreement, we had defined as moments in which music and dance should meet. By working separately on choreography and musical composition, this gave music and dance complete autonomy between the meeting points set by the “structure.” Immediately, this way of working gave me a feeling of freedom in dance, freeing me from the “note by note” process to which I was accustomed. I had a very clear notion of both the distinct character and the interdependence of dance and music.
Case
The second event occurred when I began, in the 1950s, to use aleatory processes to make choreographies. I have used different methods that initially involved the elaboration of a large number of dance phrases, each one separately, and then the need to apply the combination to find in which order to chain them. Which phrase follows which phrase, how a given movement works in time and rhythm, how many and which dancers will be involved, in what place and in what way. This has led and continues to lead to new discoveries on the transitions between movements, in a way that almost always surpasses imagination. I continue to make choreographies with random procedures that find new ways of approaching each dance.
Camera
The third event, in the seventies, arises from our work for video and cinema. The space of the camera represents a challenge. It imposes clear limits, but also offers possibilities for work that do not exist on stage. The camera takes a fixed point of view, but it can be moved. There is the possibility of passing “cut” to a second camera and, by changing the height of the dancer on the screen, one plays on the time and rhythm of the movement. The camera also shows dance in a way that is impossible to see on stage: it reveals details that do not appear in the larger picture of the performance hall. Working with video and film has also allowed me to review some elements of technique. For example, because of the speed with which an image is captured on television, I have introduced different rhythms into my class that add a new dimension to our overall attitude to work.
Computer
The fourth event is the most recent. In recent years I have had access to a software called LifeForms, a collaboration between the Departments of Dance and Science at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. It can be used to memorize work: for example, a teacher can memorize exercises and students can consult them if they need clarification. I have already memorized a small number of specific exercises that we use in the course. But my personal interest is always in discovering the unknown. With the animated character Sequence Editor (order modifier), you can invent movements, memorize them and then build a sentence. It is possible to observe this character from all angles, including from above, and this is a blessing when creating a dance for the camera. In addition, this software offers potential that already existed in photography, where a figure can be captured from an angle that our eye has never seen before. On the computer, time is modifiable, and this allows you to see in slow motion how the body passes from one form to another. Obviously, it sometimes produces forms and transitions that are unrealizable for humans, but, as with the “rhythmic structure”, with the use of random processes, therefore with the work on the camera, and now with computer science, I discover new possibilities that once again open up new paths.
