Douglas Dunn

A.B., Art History, Princeton University, 1964

Performed with Yvonne Rainer & Group (1968-70), Merce Cunningham & Dance Company (1969-73), Grand Union (1970-76).

1971 began presenting his own work, solos, collaborative duets and group pieces, de-emphasizing dancing and asking the question what am I doing here on stage anyway. During this period presented 101, a performance exhibit, four hours of stillness six days a week for seven weeks, and completed two films, one with Charles Atlas, Mayonnaise: Part I, and one with Amy Greenfield, 101. In 1975, signaling a return to uninhibited dancing, presented the hour long solo Gestures in Red in New York City, and went on to tour the work in France, Canada and the United States. In 1976-77 worked on Lazy Madge, an ongoing choreographic project for ten dancers. Structuring rehearsals around the availability of the dancers, continued to add steps over an eighteen month period, a performance being a snapshot of a particular moment in the process, each dancer having choice of when and with what front to present the material that had been custom made for him or her.

Douglas Dunn & Dancers formed in 1978 and that year invited to perform at the Autumn Festival in Paris. In 1980 the Autumn Festival and The Paris Opera Ballet invited Dunn to choreograph Stravinsky's full length Pulcinella on the Opera dancers as part of an homage to the composer. The success of this piece led to a rash of commissions and Company work in France during the 1980's, including Gondolages (1988), a trio for Dunn, Jean Guizerix and Wilfride Piollet, the etoiles who had danced the leads in Pulcinella, design by Uli Gassmann, and Futurities, a "jazz wedding" by soprano saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy featuring songs set to poems by Robert Creeley with design by Kenneth Noland, in which Dunn danced with Elsa Wolliaston.

In 1990 Dunn completed his second video-dance commissioned by Susan Dowling of WGBH in Boston, The Myth of Modern Dance, based on his solo Haole (1988), direction and costumes by Charles Atlas, the first being Secret of the Waterfall (1983), also with Charles Atlas, with text by Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn and his dancers have appeared in a number of films by Rudy Burckhardt, the most thoroughgoing collaboration being Rubble Dance (1992).

In 1992 Dunn joined forces with artist David Ireland and lighting designer Carol Mullins for Stucco Moon, a piece which merged the company with dancers from the place the piece was to be performed: Minneapolis, MN; Washington, D.C.; Portland, OR; New York City; Perth, Australia.

In 1996 Dunn and composer Joshua Fried presented Spell for Opening the Mouth of N, merging ten dancers with eight singer/actors in an operatic, evening-length work with design by Dunn's long time collaborator Mimi Gross.

In 1997 made Riddance, a dance of five consecutive solos inspired by the Five Element Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

1998 conceived Cocca Mocca, a consciously sociological dance for 12, in the round, 4 separate musical groups, one at each corner of the space at Danspace Project, St. Mark’s Church, set overhead by Mimi Gross, costumes by Charles Atlas.

1999 made Triskelion on commission from The Wellspring Project, and Backscatter for the Washington Square Repertory Dance Company.

2000 taught and set work in Istanbul, and presented The Common Good, formally asking everyone he knew, before beginning, what they wanted see.

2001, collaborated with playwright Jim Neu on AEROBIA, at PS122. Neu wrote a play, Dunn made a phrase for every line. Neu and Dunn were in the piece with four younger dancers. Mimi Gross provided the set, an abstract “gym of the future.”

2003, premiered Muscle Shoals at the Theatre de la Bastille in Paris, Steve Lacy on soprano sax, Petja Kaufman on harpsichord, live video by Charles Atlas, lighting by Carol Mullins, Dunn playing a traveler between dimensions who comes across a group of beings who can’t see or her him.

2004, presented The Higgs field at the Pinetum in Central Park, New York City, six of us amid squirrels, dogs, babies, & Park officials eager to tell us what we could & could not do where.