Douglas Dunn (Choreographer)
Encyclopedia
Douglas Dunn is an American
postmodern dancer and choreographer. He is considered a highly eclectic and minimalist postmodern
choreographer, who uses humor, props, and text in his dances.
where he studied under Margaret Jenkins, Ted Shawn
, Matteo, Margaret Craske, La Meri, and Gus Solomons, Jr. Dunn received his B.A in 1964 in Art History
from Princeton University
in New Jersey. After college he continued his studies at the Martha Graham
summer program in 1963 and 1964, the Joffrey Ballet School
from 1964–1965 and the Margaret Jenkins Studio. Dunn moved to New York in 1968 where he started training at the American Ballet Center
with Françoise Martinez and at the Merce Cunningham School
.
and was a dancer with her company from 1968-1970. After completion of his studies with the Merce Cunningham studio, he was accepted into their professional company as a dancer from 1969-1973. In 1970 he became a member of the avant-garde improvisational group the The Grand Union
until 1976.
, Groupe de Recherche Choréographique de l'Opéra de Paris, Grande Ballet de Bordeaux, New Dance Ensemble of Minneapolis, Walker Art Center
(Minneapolis), Repertory Dance Theater (Salt Lake City), Ballet Théâtre Francais de Nancy, Institute for Contemporary Art (Boston), Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (Australia), and Portland State University
(Oregon).
Dunn uses many different choreographic elements in his dances which makes it hard to classify him into a specific genre of dance. He conveyed a minimalist
approach in his work by using elements of silence, stillness, simple movements, text, pedestrian movements, gestures and humor. He also incorporated varying aesthetics
like costumes, music, set designs and lights. In 101, a performance exhibit choreographed in 1974, Dunn used his apartment to create a maze of cubes of rough-hewn lumber that covered his entire loft. For four hours a day and six days a week in two months he held an open studio for viewers to enter the set and explore his creation in which they would find him lying on top of the boxes in a sort of trance with his eyes closed. Dunn's seven best-known works are, Nevada, Four for Nothing, 101, Octopus, Time Out, Gestures in Red, and Lazy Madge. He is mostly known for creating solo pieces like Lazy Madge, Haole, and Nevada. However he also created many group pieces like Celeste in 1977 which featured about forty dancers. In 1980, Dunn created Pulcinella as a commission for the Paris Opera Ballet
. He was commissioned by l'Opéra de Paris in 1981 to set his work, Cycles, on the Groupe de Recherche Chorégraphique.
Since the 1980s, Dunn expressed a growing interest in collaborations with many different artists as well as presenting site-specific and evening length works. Dunn collaborated with many choreographers including Sara Rudner, David Gordon, Pat Catterson, and Sheela Raj. He has worked with film makers including Charles Atlas and Amy Greenfield, and poets like Anna Waldman and Reed Bye. His important film collaborations include, Mayonnaise-Part I directed by Charles Atlas, 101 by Amy Greenfield, Secret of the Waterfall by Susan Dowling and directed by Charles Atlas. His solo work, The Myth of Modern Dance was also directed by Charles Atlas in 1990 which was based on his previous solo, Haole in 1988, a comedic piece. In the 1990s, his major film works included Rubble Dance and Long Island City both directed by Rudy Burckhardt which were shot outside in industrial venues around Queens. He collaborated with painter Mimi Gross to create sets and costumes and Carol Mullins to designs lights in Sky Eye in 1989, Caracole in 1995, and Spell for Opening the Mouth of N in 1996. In 1983, Dunn collaborated with sculptor Jeffrey Schiff and composer John Driscoll to create a dance installation piece entitled Second Mesa for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In a collaboration with sculptor David Ireland
, Stucco Moon, was created in 1992 with the use of costumes, sets and sounds which was performed in many locations including a gymnasium, a museum, and a conventional theater. Each time this piece was performed the set design was reconfigured according to each performance space which also allowed for changes and variations in the choreography and costuming. In 1994, Disappearances, a site specific work, consisted of dancers randomly placed throughout different crowds in New York during lunchtime where they executed movement with simple gestures.
, New York State Council on the Arts
, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
, New York Foundation for the Arts
, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and Creative Arts Public Service Program. In 2008, the French Embassy in New York, presented Douglas Dunn with the insignia of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, inducting him into the Order as a "Chevalier," who has "significantly contributed to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance." In 1998, Dunn received a New York Dance and Performance Award, a “Bessie.”
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
postmodern dancer and choreographer. He is considered a highly eclectic and minimalist postmodern
Postmodern dance
Postmodern dance is a 20th century concert dance form. A reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of modern dance, postmodern dance hailed the use of everyday movement as valid performance art and advocated novel methods of dance composition....
choreographer, who uses humor, props, and text in his dances.
Training and education
Douglas Dunn started dancing in college in 1962, studying under Audreé Estey, Maggie Sinclair, and Roland Guerard at the Princeton Ballet Society. In 1963 he attended the Jacob's Pillow Dance FestivalJacob's Pillow
Jacob’s Pillow Dance is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The organization is known for the oldest internationally acclaimed summer dance festival in the United States. The facility also includes a professional school and extensive...
where he studied under Margaret Jenkins, Ted Shawn
Ted Shawn
Ted Shawn , originally Edwin Myers Shawn, was one of the first notable male pioneers of American modern dance. Along with creating Denishawn with former wife Ruth St. Denis he is also responsible for the creation of the well known all-male company Ted Shawn and His Men Dancers...
, Matteo, Margaret Craske, La Meri, and Gus Solomons, Jr. Dunn received his B.A in 1964 in Art History
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in New Jersey. After college he continued his studies at the Martha Graham
Martha Graham
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.She danced and choreographed for over seventy years...
summer program in 1963 and 1964, the Joffrey Ballet School
Joffrey Ballet
The Joffrey Ballet is a dance company in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1956. From 1995 to 2004, the company was known as The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. The company regularly performs classical ballets including Romeo & Juliet and The Nutcracker, while balancing those classics with pioneering modern...
from 1964–1965 and the Margaret Jenkins Studio. Dunn moved to New York in 1968 where he started training at the American Ballet Center
School of American Ballet
The School of American Ballet is one of the most famous classical ballet schools in the world and is the associate school of the New York City Ballet, a leading international ballet company based at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. The school trains students from the...
with Françoise Martinez and at the Merce Cunningham School
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
.
Performing career
In New York, Dunn began working with Yvonne RainerYvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...
and was a dancer with her company from 1968-1970. After completion of his studies with the Merce Cunningham studio, he was accepted into their professional company as a dancer from 1969-1973. In 1970 he became a member of the avant-garde improvisational group the The Grand Union
Grand Union (dance group)
The Grand Union was an improvisational dance group based in New York City from 1970 to 1976. It grew out of Yvonne Rainer's piece Continuous Project - Altered Daily. Rainer's sole authority as choreographer began to slip in early 1970 when the dancers, at her invitation, began to bring in their...
until 1976.
Danced roles
Choreography
Dunn premiered his professional company, Douglas Dunn and Dancers, in 1976, where he served as artistic director. He was commissioned by various companies to choreograph works including the Paris Opera BalletParis Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...
, Groupe de Recherche Choréographique de l'Opéra de Paris, Grande Ballet de Bordeaux, New Dance Ensemble of Minneapolis, Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
(Minneapolis), Repertory Dance Theater (Salt Lake City), Ballet Théâtre Francais de Nancy, Institute for Contemporary Art (Boston), Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (Australia), and Portland State University
Portland State University
Portland State University is a public state urban university located in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1946, it has the largest overall enrollment of any university in the state of Oregon, including undergraduate and graduate students. It is also the only public university in...
(Oregon).
Dunn uses many different choreographic elements in his dances which makes it hard to classify him into a specific genre of dance. He conveyed a minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
approach in his work by using elements of silence, stillness, simple movements, text, pedestrian movements, gestures and humor. He also incorporated varying aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
like costumes, music, set designs and lights. In 101, a performance exhibit choreographed in 1974, Dunn used his apartment to create a maze of cubes of rough-hewn lumber that covered his entire loft. For four hours a day and six days a week in two months he held an open studio for viewers to enter the set and explore his creation in which they would find him lying on top of the boxes in a sort of trance with his eyes closed. Dunn's seven best-known works are, Nevada, Four for Nothing, 101, Octopus, Time Out, Gestures in Red, and Lazy Madge. He is mostly known for creating solo pieces like Lazy Madge, Haole, and Nevada. However he also created many group pieces like Celeste in 1977 which featured about forty dancers. In 1980, Dunn created Pulcinella as a commission for the Paris Opera Ballet
Paris Opera Ballet
The Paris Opera Ballet is the oldest national ballet company in the world, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it...
. He was commissioned by l'Opéra de Paris in 1981 to set his work, Cycles, on the Groupe de Recherche Chorégraphique.
Since the 1980s, Dunn expressed a growing interest in collaborations with many different artists as well as presenting site-specific and evening length works. Dunn collaborated with many choreographers including Sara Rudner, David Gordon, Pat Catterson, and Sheela Raj. He has worked with film makers including Charles Atlas and Amy Greenfield, and poets like Anna Waldman and Reed Bye. His important film collaborations include, Mayonnaise-Part I directed by Charles Atlas, 101 by Amy Greenfield, Secret of the Waterfall by Susan Dowling and directed by Charles Atlas. His solo work, The Myth of Modern Dance was also directed by Charles Atlas in 1990 which was based on his previous solo, Haole in 1988, a comedic piece. In the 1990s, his major film works included Rubble Dance and Long Island City both directed by Rudy Burckhardt which were shot outside in industrial venues around Queens. He collaborated with painter Mimi Gross to create sets and costumes and Carol Mullins to designs lights in Sky Eye in 1989, Caracole in 1995, and Spell for Opening the Mouth of N in 1996. In 1983, Dunn collaborated with sculptor Jeffrey Schiff and composer John Driscoll to create a dance installation piece entitled Second Mesa for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In a collaboration with sculptor David Ireland
David Ireland (artist)
David Kenneth Ireland was an American artist and co-founder of the artist residency.Born in Bellingham, Washington, he studied Printmaking and Industrial Arts at California College of Arts and Crafts, prior to joining the Army in the early 1950s...
, Stucco Moon, was created in 1992 with the use of costumes, sets and sounds which was performed in many locations including a gymnasium, a museum, and a conventional theater. Each time this piece was performed the set design was reconfigured according to each performance space which also allowed for changes and variations in the choreography and costuming. In 1994, Disappearances, a site specific work, consisted of dancers randomly placed throughout different crowds in New York during lunchtime where they executed movement with simple gestures.
Choreographic works
Awards
Dunn has received many awards and Fellowships including Cowles Chair, University of Minnesota, the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell , with backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and began its work in 1961...
, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
, New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, and Creative Arts Public Service Program. In 2008, the French Embassy in New York, presented Douglas Dunn with the insignia of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, inducting him into the Order as a "Chevalier," who has "significantly contributed to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance." In 1998, Dunn received a New York Dance and Performance Award, a “Bessie.”