Panel text reads:
In the summer of 1953, Black Mountain College held its last Summer Institute of the Arts. The same summer saw the birth of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, now in its forty-second year (and stronger than ever). In exchange for teaching classes for six weeks and presenting two performances, Merce was allowed to have four dancers – Remy Charlip, Joanne Melsher, Marianne Preger and myself – on residence for three weeks. He received no salary. Nor, of course, did we. Three other dancers (Anita Dencks, Viola Garber and Paul Taylor) were also invited to to attend as students – two of them on full scholarship. For us, Black Mountain was a kind of paradise: the paradise of being able to be dancers twenty-four hours a day, greed from the dreary little jobs most of us needed to pay rent and grocery bills, freed from the rehearsal scheduling hassles of trying to accommodate the peculiar hours of seven or more persons’ dreary little jobs, and freed too from hours wasted on subways and buses shuttling us back and forth to classes, rehearsals, jobs (dreary little) and our New York cold water flats or unheated lofts. At Black Mountain we could walk on dirt roads, breath clean air, hear birds at dawn; eat good plain fare from the college’s farm, be housed in rural simplicity, devote ourselves to dancing all dat and, to add to our good fortune, be surrounded by artists and students of other disciplines who were equally free to do nothing else but their work, and/or talk, debate, argue and proselytize about it. The summer sizzled with controversial ideas and high spirits.
When Marianne, Joanne and I arrived in Asheville, North Carolina (Remy arrived separately from Colorado) after twenty-two hours on three different buses, there was no one there to meet us as promised. Jounced and jostled all night in miserable broken seats, our bodies beginning to atrophy and our heads spinning with fatigue, we waited an hour before finally hiring a taxi which delivered us, in a swirl of dust, in front of a large wooden building where we would spend most of our waking hours for the next three weeks. A tall, bearded, Carolina farmer-type (who turned out to be Paul Taylor), greeted us with the news that we’d be rehearsing that very afternoon. Thus did Merce set the pace for the intensive work which followed. Quite simply, that three week work period changed my life. It was more concentrated that any I’d ever known. And more rewarding. Despite the single-mindedness of our focus there was so much more than dance and dancing to engage us: sharing an active life with poets and potters, painters and composers made us part of the wildly stimulating community which was both intellectually challenging and fun. At first people were simply curious about our activities because we were never seen except at meal times: then they were shocked by the rigorous demands Merce made on himself and us. Eventually the strenuous, non-stop, totally committed way we conducted our lives met with universal admiration, even awe.
I had yet to commit myself to life as a dancer. At Black Mountain, dancing from morning into the night felt ‘right’. But it was more than that which redirected my life. Dancing eight or more hours a day with any other choreographer in any other environment in the 1950’s would not have generated the same quality of intense involvement – art/life/process – which we experienced so rigorously working with Merce at Black Mountain.
Carolyn Brown
August 27, 1995
In the summer of 1953, Black Mountain College held its last Summer Institute of the Arts. The same summer saw the birth of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, now in its forty-second year (and stronger than ever). In exchange for teaching classes for six weeks and presenting two performances, Merce was allowed to have four dancers – Remy Charlip, Joanne Melsher, Marianne Preger and myself – on residence for three weeks. He received no salary. Nor, of course, did we. Three other dancers (Anita Dencks, Viola Garber and Paul Taylor) were also invited to to attend as students – two of them on full scholarship. For us, Black Mountain was a kind of paradise: the paradise of being able to be dancers twenty-four hours a day, greed from the dreary little jobs most of us needed to pay rent and grocery bills, freed from the rehearsal scheduling hassles of trying to accommodate the peculiar hours of seven or more persons’ dreary little jobs, and freed too from hours wasted on subways and buses shuttling us back and forth to classes, rehearsals, jobs (dreary little) and our New York cold water flats or unheated lofts. At Black Mountain we could walk on dirt roads, breath clean air, hear birds at dawn; eat good plain fare from the college’s farm, be housed in rural simplicity, devote ourselves to dancing all dat and, to add to our good fortune, be surrounded by artists and students of other disciplines who were equally free to do nothing else but their work, and/or talk, debate, argue and proselytize about it. The summer sizzled with controversial ideas and high spirits.
When Marianne, Joanne and I arrived in Asheville, North Carolina (Remy arrived separately from Colorado) after twenty-two hours on three different buses, there was no one there to meet us as promised. Jounced and jostled all night in miserable broken seats, our bodies beginning to atrophy and our heads spinning with fatigue, we waited an hour before finally hiring a taxi which delivered us, in a swirl of dust, in front of a large wooden building where we would spend most of our waking hours for the next three weeks. A tall, bearded, Carolina farmer-type (who turned out to be Paul Taylor), greeted us with the news that we’d be rehearsing that very afternoon. Thus did Merce set the pace for the intensive work which followed. Quite simply, that three week work period changed my life. It was more concentrated that any I’d ever known. And more rewarding. Despite the single-mindedness of our focus there was so much more than dance and dancing to engage us: sharing an active life with poets and potters, painters and composers made us part of the wildly stimulating community which was both intellectually challenging and fun. At first people were simply curious about our activities because we were never seen except at meal times: then they were shocked by the rigorous demands Merce made on himself and us. Eventually the strenuous, non-stop, totally committed way we conducted our lives met with universal admiration, even awe.
I had yet to commit myself to life as a dancer. At Black Mountain, dancing from morning into the night felt ‘right’. But it was more than that which redirected my life. Dancing eight or more hours a day with any other choreographer in any other environment in the 1950’s would not have generated the same quality of intense involvement – art/life/process – which we experienced so rigorously working with Merce at Black Mountain.
Carolyn Brown
August 27, 1995
Artwork: 1995.97.1
"In the summer of 1953..."
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
24 x 18 inches
In copyright
Gift of Carolyn Brown
Carolyn Brown, "In the summer of 1953...", 1995. Printed paper on foam board. Collection of Black Mountain College + Arts Center. Gift of the artist.
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