Elaine Summers
Encyclopedia
Elaine Summers American
choreographer, experimental filmmaker, and intermedia pioneer.
Summers was a founding member of the workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater
and significantly contributed to the interaction of film
and dance
, as well as the expansion of dance into other related disciplines, such as visual art, film, and theater. She furthermore fostered the expansion of performing dance in new, often outdoor locations. Her movement approach Kinetic Awareness
offers a comprehensive perspective on human movement and dance.
that would later be referred to as the Judson Dance Theater in its second term 1962, together with a.o. Trisha Brown
, Ruth Emerson, Fred Herko, Sally Gross, Edward Bhartonne, Carolee Schneemann
, Gretchen MacLane, Deborah Hay
, David Gordon, and Valda Setterfield
.
At Judson, Summers shared in the ongoing experiments with chance methods and pedestrian movement as part of the interest in expanding the then accepted methods of creating and performing dances. However she also embraced the more theatrical part of the collective (Aileen Passloff, John Herbert McDowell and others). Summers expanded dance into other disciplines, experimental film
, visual art, and body work. In the later phase of the Judson Dance Theater she created dances that would to work with the entire environment of the performance space. She also initiated five of the total of 16 concerts of the group, one at Turnau Opera, Woodstock NY (Concert #2) and one series (Concerts #9-#12) at the Gramercy Arts Theater in New York City.
Her learning of filmmaking and her experiments at Judson finally led to her own intermedia presentation Fantastic Gardens in 1964, where she used the entire performance space, located the audience in several settings, virtually covered the entire space in film- and slide projections, and combined many works of music and sculpture with her own dances, many of them improvisational scores realised by the dancers.
®, a bodymind practice to help the individual find out more about their unique body and its possibilities of movement, as well as make informed choices about their physical well-being. This work was strongly influenced by Summers' study with Charlotte Selver
and Carola Speads both students of Elsa Gindler
. Listening to one's body-signals (proprioception
) is the key action, whether at rest or in movement. The study is divided into five phases, from very slow, gentle movement of one body part at a time, to increasingly complex coordination, speed, tension, and interaction levels. It is up to the practitioner's individual choice how much they expand their movement options. Hollow rubber balls of different sizes are put underneath body parts to aid multi-directional movement and provide a self-directed massage
through their elasticity.
This practice became the dance-technique for the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. and has been studied by many professionals and individuals across the world, also through certified teachers of The Kinetic Awareness® Center. One close associate in the days around Judson was Trisha Brown
who performed with Summers in one of the very first performances of Energy Changes at Loeb's Student Center, NYU in 1971 titled From the Still Point (see below). Other students were Meredith Monk
, members of The Wooster Group
, and many others.
, who would form her own company (a.o. Tedrian Chizik, Edward Bhartonne, Alexandra Ogsbury, Roberta Escamilla Garrison). To facilitate this process financially, she founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation which is still active in the field of experimental music
in New York today.
In 1971 the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company premiered Energy Changes at Loeb's Student Center of New York University. The piece covers all the five phases of Kinetic Awareness, from slow gentle movement of body parts without active interference from the dancer, to highly energetic group interactions (with titles such as 'Bear Dance' or 'Pile-up'). The piece went into full premiere in 1973 at the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City, including an early use of video showing dancers located in other parts of the garden, in collaboration with Davidson Gigliotti, composers Philipp Corner and Carman Moore, recorded on video by Nam June Paik
.
The Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company toured extensively in the United States of America as well as abroad, a.o. to Italy, the UK, and Australia. Concerts would regularly have parts where the audience was invited to join in the realisation of dance scores which often created an awareness of basic elements of theatre dance, such as walking, or improvisation.
Invitation to Secret Dancers was done in the same spirit on outdoor locations in many countries. (the latest performance was in New York City in 2005) Illuminated Workingman brought the city of Buffalo, NY, and construction work together with dance and intermedia, including several performances on location and workshops given to the public.
In 1980 Summers started to present her involvement with the sky. Skydance was shown during the 2nd Intermedia Art Festival at the University of Iowa (where she also made several film-dances as artist-in-residence) and subsequently at the Guggenheim
museum. These events included balloons, planes, and large sky-objects created by Otto Piene
.
Today Elaine Summers lives and works in New York City where she teaches Kinetic Awareness and develops Skytime an ongoing project that is centered on the use of the internet. Summers also continues to create new dance pieces, while parallel pursuing the creation of her Archives and the publication of her Improvizational Dance Score Book.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
choreographer, experimental filmmaker, and intermedia pioneer.
Summers was a founding member of the workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater
Judson Dance Theater was an informal group of dancers who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a dance composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage...
and significantly contributed to the interaction of film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
, as well as the expansion of dance into other related disciplines, such as visual art, film, and theater. She furthermore fostered the expansion of performing dance in new, often outdoor locations. Her movement approach Kinetic Awareness
Kinetic Awareness
Kinetic Awareness is a system of bodywork originated by the American choreographer Elaine Summers in the second half of the 20th century, starting in the 1950s....
offers a comprehensive perspective on human movement and dance.
To Judson Dance Theater
Summers was born in Perth, Australia and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. She came to New York in the 1950s and became part of the workshop-group originally initiated by Robert Ellis DunnRobert Ellis Dunn
Robert Ellis Dunn was an American musician and choreographer who led classes in dance composition, contributing to the birth of the postmodern dance period in the early 1960s in New York City .-Early years:...
that would later be referred to as the Judson Dance Theater in its second term 1962, together with a.o. Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
, Ruth Emerson, Fred Herko, Sally Gross, Edward Bhartonne, Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann
Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...
, Gretchen MacLane, Deborah Hay
Deborah Hay
-Life and work:Deborah Hay was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. Her mother was her first dance teacher and directed her training until she was a teenager. Hay moved at age 19 to Downtown, Manhattan in the 1960s, where she continued her training with Merce Cunningham and Mia Slavenska...
, David Gordon, and Valda Setterfield
Valda Setterfield
Valda Setterfield is a dancer and actress noted for his work as a soloist with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and her performances with and in the work of her husband, postmodern choreographer and director David Gordon. She has been described as Gordon's "muse"...
.
At Judson, Summers shared in the ongoing experiments with chance methods and pedestrian movement as part of the interest in expanding the then accepted methods of creating and performing dances. However she also embraced the more theatrical part of the collective (Aileen Passloff, John Herbert McDowell and others). Summers expanded dance into other disciplines, experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
, visual art, and body work. In the later phase of the Judson Dance Theater she created dances that would to work with the entire environment of the performance space. She also initiated five of the total of 16 concerts of the group, one at Turnau Opera, Woodstock NY (Concert #2) and one series (Concerts #9-#12) at the Gramercy Arts Theater in New York City.
Intermedia
Summers worked intensively with film and its inclusion in live performance. This happened as early as in the first Judson Concert of Dance, when she went out to dance in the projection of her self-initiated chance-film Ouverture which she had made in collaboration with John Herbert McDowell and Eugene Friedman.Her learning of filmmaking and her experiments at Judson finally led to her own intermedia presentation Fantastic Gardens in 1964, where she used the entire performance space, located the audience in several settings, virtually covered the entire space in film- and slide projections, and combined many works of music and sculpture with her own dances, many of them improvisational scores realised by the dancers.
Kinetic Awareness®
Starting with her teaching work in the 1950s, Summers developed Kinetic AwarenessKinetic Awareness
Kinetic Awareness is a system of bodywork originated by the American choreographer Elaine Summers in the second half of the 20th century, starting in the 1950s....
®, a bodymind practice to help the individual find out more about their unique body and its possibilities of movement, as well as make informed choices about their physical well-being. This work was strongly influenced by Summers' study with Charlotte Selver
Charlotte Selver
Charlotte Selver was a German music educationalist.The central point of Charlotte Selver's work was "experience through the senses"...
and Carola Speads both students of Elsa Gindler
Elsa Gindler
Elsa Gindler was a somatic bodywork pioneer in Germany.Born in Berlin, gymnastics teacher, student of Hedwig Kallmeyer ....
. Listening to one's body-signals (proprioception
Proprioception
Proprioception , from Latin proprius, meaning "one's own" and perception, is the sense of the relative position of neighbouring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement...
) is the key action, whether at rest or in movement. The study is divided into five phases, from very slow, gentle movement of one body part at a time, to increasingly complex coordination, speed, tension, and interaction levels. It is up to the practitioner's individual choice how much they expand their movement options. Hollow rubber balls of different sizes are put underneath body parts to aid multi-directional movement and provide a self-directed massage
Massage
Massage is the manipulation of superficial and deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue to enhance function, aid in the healing process, and promote relaxation and well-being. The word comes from the French massage "friction of kneading", or from Arabic massa meaning "to touch, feel or handle"...
through their elasticity.
This practice became the dance-technique for the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Co. and has been studied by many professionals and individuals across the world, also through certified teachers of The Kinetic Awareness® Center. One close associate in the days around Judson was Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
who performed with Summers in one of the very first performances of Energy Changes at Loeb's Student Center, NYU in 1971 titled From the Still Point (see below). Other students were Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...
, members of The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group
The Wooster Group is a New York City-based experimental theater company known for creating numerous original dramatic works. It gradually emerged during 1975-1980 from Richard Schechner's The Performance Group and took its name in 1980...
, and many others.
After Judson (1964-present)
Elaine Summers continued to make intermedia-work combining film and dance and started to train dancers in Kinetic AwarenessKinetic Awareness
Kinetic Awareness is a system of bodywork originated by the American choreographer Elaine Summers in the second half of the 20th century, starting in the 1950s....
, who would form her own company (a.o. Tedrian Chizik, Edward Bhartonne, Alexandra Ogsbury, Roberta Escamilla Garrison). To facilitate this process financially, she founded the Experimental Intermedia Foundation which is still active in the field of experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
in New York today.
In 1971 the Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company premiered Energy Changes at Loeb's Student Center of New York University. The piece covers all the five phases of Kinetic Awareness, from slow gentle movement of body parts without active interference from the dancer, to highly energetic group interactions (with titles such as 'Bear Dance' or 'Pile-up'). The piece went into full premiere in 1973 at the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in New York City, including an early use of video showing dancers located in other parts of the garden, in collaboration with Davidson Gigliotti, composers Philipp Corner and Carman Moore, recorded on video by Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
.
The Elaine Summers Dance & Film Company toured extensively in the United States of America as well as abroad, a.o. to Italy, the UK, and Australia. Concerts would regularly have parts where the audience was invited to join in the realisation of dance scores which often created an awareness of basic elements of theatre dance, such as walking, or improvisation.
Invitation to Secret Dancers was done in the same spirit on outdoor locations in many countries. (the latest performance was in New York City in 2005) Illuminated Workingman brought the city of Buffalo, NY, and construction work together with dance and intermedia, including several performances on location and workshops given to the public.
In 1980 Summers started to present her involvement with the sky. Skydance was shown during the 2nd Intermedia Art Festival at the University of Iowa (where she also made several film-dances as artist-in-residence) and subsequently at the Guggenheim
Guggenheim
Guggenheim may refer to:* Benjamin Guggenheim* Charles Guggenheim* Davis Guggenheim* Guggenheim Building* Guggenheim family* Guggenheim Fellowship* Guggenheim Museum * Harry Frank Guggenheim* John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation...
museum. These events included balloons, planes, and large sky-objects created by Otto Piene
Otto Piene
Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts.-Biography:...
.
Today Elaine Summers lives and works in New York City where she teaches Kinetic Awareness and develops Skytime an ongoing project that is centered on the use of the internet. Summers also continues to create new dance pieces, while parallel pursuing the creation of her Archives and the publication of her Improvizational Dance Score Book.
Sources
- Banes, Sally, Democracy's body. Judson Dance Theater 1962-64. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1983
- Green, Jill, The Use of Balls in Kinetic Awareness 1982, JOPERD, Vol. 63 No. 8
- Saltonstall, Ellen Kinetic Awareness: Discovering Your Bodymind 1988, Kinetic Awareness Center / The Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, New York City (out of print)
- Körtvélyessy, Thomas, committed to body choice and intermedia: Elaine Summers. paper dance history, Rotterdamse Dansacademie, 1994
- Körtvélyessy, Thomas, completely coming into moving: Kinetic Awareness for the contemporary dance teacher. paper educational sciences, Rotterdamse Dansacademie, 1996 (written in Dutch)
- Wooster, Anne-Sargent, Elaine Summers. moving to dance. The Drama Review T86, New York NY, December 1980, pp. 59–70