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Robert Ellis Dunn: Personal Stories In Motion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2014
Extract
The late Robert Ellis Dunn (1928–1996) made a vital contribution to the maturation of modern dance in the twentieth century as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography. His pedagogy in both the professional and academic milieux reinforced interdisciplinary associations between dance and related disciplines in the arts and humanities, and helped situate dance as a science within a theoretical framework worthy of scholarly study. The following article is a study of the principles and pedagogy that Dunn engaged in as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography for nearly forty years.
I first met Dunn in 1981 at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in New York and in 1982, I worked as his teaching assistant at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York and at the University of California Summer School of Dance in Long Beach. During the six-week summer dance intensive in California, I assisted and performed in two events directed by Dunn: Top, a structured improvisation for nine dancers, and Pivot/Delay, a choreographic process for twenty-two dancers (1).
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