Robert Ellis Dunn

Robert Ellis Dunn (1928 - July 5, 1996) 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.

Dunn was born in Oklahoma where he toured the state early on in his career as a tap dancer. However, his first training in the arts was in music, and he studied music composition and theory at the New England Conservatory. From 1955 to 1958 he studied dance at the Boston Conservatory of Music and taught percussion for the dancers of the conservatory. The Boston Conservatory is where Dunn first began working with Merce Cunningham.

Robert Dunn first collaborated with Merce Cunningham in performances in Boston and New York City in 1958. He soon moved to New York, where he worked as a piano accompanist at the Cunningham Studio. Dunn had attended some of John Cage’s seminars on composition at the New School for Social Research in New York City, and Cage encouraged Dunn to continue these classes, which were first taught at the Cunningham Studio. Dunn applied many of Cage’s principles regarding music to his movement classes. Dunn’s students included musicians, visual artists, and dancers such as Simone Forti, David Gordon, Steve Paxton, Meredith Monk, Lucinda Childs, Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown.

In July 1962, the class performed their work at the Judson Memorial Church. This performance is widely considered the beginning of a new era in modern dance that was based on non-traditional methods of approaching choreography and performance, specifically regarding the use of improvisation. Dunn went on to teach at many professional schools and universities, including Columbia Teachers College and University of Maryland, College Park. Dunn also served as an assistant curator at the Research Dance Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center from 1965 to 1972. He continued teaching at University of Maryland College Park until recent years. Dunn also became interested in dance for camera, or “videodance,” in which an installation was created with Matthew Chernov and premiered t the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee on January 30, 1997, after his death. Robert Dunn died of heart failure in New Carrollton, Maryland on July 5, 1996. He was 67 years old.

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