Roger Copeland

Roger Copeland, professor of theater and dance at Oberlin College, discusses dance icon Merce Cunningham, the subject of his new book, Merce Cunningham and the Modernizing of Modern Dance (Routledge). The first scholarly work to examine the choreographer Merce Cunningham's entire fifty-year career, Copeland's book is also a brilliant history of theater, dance, art, music, and intellectual movements in America. Copeland places Cunningham's work in the broader context that includes the music of John Cage and the visual art of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, artists with whom Cunningham frequently collaborated. Copeland's publications also include the book What Is Dance? and numerous articles about dance, theater, and film in the New York Times, New Republic, Village Voice, Dance Theatre Journal, Partisan Review, American Theatre, and other periodicals.

Cosponsored by Ohio State's Department of Dance.