Chance Method

This week's focus on using choreographic techniques was the chance method, created by Merce Cunningham who is renowned for this strategy. Cunningham used this method to 'Structure his choreography' to create eye-capturing choreography that had a beautiful sense of imagination and flow to the movement. (The six sides of Merce Cunningham, 2021)

In this lesson, we were given 3 words that were linked to our stimulus and created a sequence resembling each of these words. Our words were Normal, hope and isolated. We discussed what each of these words resembled and decided that normal represented life before COVID-19, Isolated represented the inhumane and lonely emotions due to having zero contact with anyone outside your household. Hope represented the aspiration of coming out of lockdown.

After we had been given our words we had to create four movements for each word, at the end of the task we had 12 movements. The chance method is a creative technique that the practitioner, Merce Cunningham uses to have a unique style to his choreography. (The six sides of Merce Cunningham, 2021) From our movement phrases, we rolled a twelve-sided die and wrote out the sequence of numbers that had been rolled. The sequence was- 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 3, 8, 10. Using this sequence we then reformed our movements to be in this number order and adapted the transitions into each movement.

I think that this creative technique is helpful when you are trying to choreograph as it is a beginning step into putting movements together. In general, I struggle with blending one movement into another however when using the chance method I find that it is a useful technique because it allows an imperfect yet structured blend from one movement to another.


Bibliography:

2021. The six sides of Merce Cunningham. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeum_kxSV8> [Accessed 29 September 2021].


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