Carolyn Brown (choreographer)

Last updated
Carolyn Brown
Born (1927-09-26) September 26, 1927 (age 96)
Education Denishawn School; Wheaton College
Occupation(s) Dancer and choreographer

Carolyn Brown (born September 26, 1927) is an American dancer, choreographer, and writer. She is best known for her work as a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and was Cunningham's leading dancer for twenty years.

Contents

Biography

Coming from a dancing family in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Carolyn (Rice) Brown studied with her mother, Marion Rice, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, who was a student and performer with Ted Shawn at the Boston-Braggiotti Denishawn School in Boston. Brown was a product of the Denishawn School and graduated with honors in philosophy from Wheaton College in 1950.

After attending a masterclass with Cunningham in Denver in 1951, she pursued dance full-time and moved to New York to continue her studies at the Juilliard School. She also studied with Cunningham and became one of the founding members of his company, which was born at Black Mountain College in North Carolina in the summer of 1953. She was the most important female dancer in Cunningham's company for the next twenty years and danced in 40 of his works, often collaborating with Cunningham and John Cage in the creative process. She created a role in Cage's Theatre Piece (1960) and on pointe in Robert Rauschenberg's first dance work Pelican (1963). A dancer of great purity and virtuosity, she was considered the ideal Cunningham interpreter.

In the early days of the company, she was married to composer Earle Brown. Later, she formed a long partnership with photographer James Klosty.

Her own choreography includes Car Lot (1968), As I Remember It, a solo in homage to Shawn (Jacob's Pillow, 1972), Bunkered for a Bogey (1973), House Party (1974), Circles (1975), and Balloon II (Ballet-Théâtre Contemporain, 1976).

Upon retirement in 1973 she took up teaching. She also continues to work with the Cunningham company as an artistic consultant. She is a member of the Cunningham Dance Foundation Board of Directors, and has worked as a freelance choreographer, filmmaker, writer, lecturer, and teacher. She has been awarded the Dance Magazine Award, five National Endowment for the Arts grants, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Her writing has been published in The New York Times , Dance Perspectives, Ballet Review , and the Dance Research Journal . She lives in Millbrook, New York.

Memoir

In 2007, Brown published her memoir Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham, which tells the story of her career, of the formative years of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and of the two artists at its center — Merce Cunningham and John Cage. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merce Cunningham</span> American dancer and choreographer (1919–2009)

Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, and graphic artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns; and fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Graham</span> American dancer and choreographer (1894–1991)

Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denishawn school</span>

The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company. Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Lillian Powell, Charles Weidman, Jack Cole, and silent film star Louise Brooks. The school was especially renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance. In time, Denishawn teachings reached another school location as well - Studio 61 at the Carnegie Hall Studios.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth St. Denis</span> American modern dancer (1879–1968)

Ruth St. Denis was an American pioneer of modern dance, introducing eastern ideas into the art and paving the way for other women in dance. She was inspired by the Delsarte advocate Genevieve Stebbins. St. Denis was the co-founder in 1915 of the American Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts. She taught notable performers including Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. In 1938, she founded the pioneering dance program at Adelphi University. She published several articles on spiritual dance and the mysticism of the body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Shawn</span> American dancer (1891–1972)

Ted Shawn was a male pioneer of American modern dance. He created the Denishawn School together with his wife Ruth St. Denis. After their separation he created the all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers. With his innovative ideas of masculine movement, he was one of the most influential choreographers and dancers of his day. He was also the founder and creator of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, and "was knighted by the King of Denmark for his efforts on behalf of the Royal Danish Ballet."

The United States of America is the home of the hip hop dance, swing, tap dance and its derivative Rock and Roll, and modern square dance and one of the major centers for modern dance. There is a variety of social dance and performance or concert dance forms with also a range of traditions of Native American dances.

Ulysses Dove was a choreographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob's Pillow</span> Dance center in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, U.S.

Jacob's Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The facility itself was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trisha Brown</span> American choreographer and dancer

Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers train their bodies, remains pervasively impactful within international postmodern dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Cole (choreographer)</span> American choreographer

Jack Cole was an American dancer, choreographer, and theatre director known as "the Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance" for his role in codifying African-American jazz dance styles, as influenced by the dance traditions of other cultures, for Broadway and Hollywood. Asked to describe his style he described it as "urban folk dance".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myra Kinch</span> American actress

Myra Kinch was a choreographer and dancer who appeared in several Hollywood motion pictures. She was from Los Angeles, California. Her eyes were blue and her hair was a dark red.

Margaret Jenkins is a postmodern choreographer based in San Francisco, California. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1980 and in 2003, San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown, declared April 24 to be Margaret Jenkins Day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Rice</span>

Marion Burbank Stevens Rice was an American modern dance choreographer, dance teacher and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern dance</span> Genre of western concert or theatrical dance

Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.

Barton Mumaw was an American dancer and choreographer who performed in modern dance concerts and musical theater productions. He was the muse of Ted Shawn, pioneer of modern dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Vaughan (dance archivist)</span> British dance archivist, historian and critic (1924–2017)

David Vaughan was a dance archivist, historian and critic. He was the archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1976 until the company was disbanded in 2012.

Barbara Dilley (Lloyd) (born 1938) is an American dancer, performance artist, improvisor, choreographer and educator, best known for her work as a prominent member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1963-1968), and then with the groundbreaking dance and performance ensemble The Grand Union, from 1969 to 1976. She has taught movement and dance at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, since 1974, developing a pedagogy that emphasizes what she calls “embodied awareness,” an approach that combines dance and movement studies with meditation, “mind training” and improvisational composition. She served as the president of Naropa University from 1985 to 1993.

Michael Mao is an American modern dance choreographer and educator. He is the artistic director of Michael Mao Dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bénédicte Pesle</span> French arts patron (1927–2018)

Bénédicte Pesle was a French arts patron. She was known for having introduced American avant-garde artists of stage, music, dance, and the visual arts to France, and was instrumental in the European careers Merce Cunningham, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Trisha Brown, amongst others.

Marianne Preger-Simon is an American dancer, choreographer, writer, and psychotherapist. She is best known for her work as a founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

References

  1. "RandomHouse.ca | Books | Chance and Circumstance by Carolyn Brown". Archived from the original on 2009-01-22. Retrieved 2008-07-21.