Margaret Lloyd’s review of the Antic Meet performance of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra echoes several themes present in the Town Hall reviews. One is the “cosmic” or “other worldly” impersonality of the Cage–Merce Cunningham collaboration. She also plays philosopher in wondering: What does it all mean? Her conclusion: Nothing in particular—their collaborative work is there merely to uncannily remind us of who and what we already are. Another echoed theme is the presence of laughter during the performance, which, in this case, is clearly amplified by Cunningham’s vaudevillian choreography for Antic Meet, in which he dances with a chair attached to his back. The dance unfolds amid the Solo for Piano’s “jungle” of sounds, which here, coupled with Cunningham’s polished choreography, turned out to be “a hit” with the audience. In a kind of visual pedagogy, Lloyd reproduces graph A from Cage’s Solo for Piano without explanation.
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Title | “Modern American Dance in Connecticut: Contrasting Styles Seen in Eleventh Annual,” Christian Science Monitor |
Maker | Margaret Lloyd |
Date | 23 August 1958 |
Type | press clipping |
Location | Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers, 980039, box 62, folder 13 |
Cite
Lloyd, Margaret. “Modern American Dance in
Connecticut: Contrasting Styles Seen in Eleventh
Annual,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 August
1958. Getty Research Institute, David Tudor Papers,
980039, box 62, folder 13. In
The Scores Project: Experimental Notation in Music,
Art, Poetry, and Dance, 1950–1975, ed. Michael Gallope, Natilee Harren, and John
Hicks. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2025.
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