Cunningham, Massey and the space-time of Ocean

Abstract

The article considers Merce Cunningham’s 1996 dance-work “Ocean” through the spatial ideas of geographer Doreen Massey. Massey’s notions of “throwntogetherness,” of space and place as trajectories in movement and not a surface, speaks to the ocean not as mapped, charted and traversed, but as force and agency. I argue that Massey’s ideas undo the fixity of space in relation to time’s implacable lurching. While her intention with this opening of space was to assert its political potential,Cunningham was hesitant to ever ascribe direct meanings to his work. “Ocean” offered itself as a text about the exploration of a language of bodies moving together in space and time. But through Massey, I argue that there is a political opening in the work that will be its lasting contribution: a politics of contingency and chance that refuses the closing of futures.