| Category: | Musical composition |
| Dated: | 1940 |
| Instrumentation: | Speaking voice and piano (four hands) |
| Duration: | |
| Premiere and performer(s): | May 7, 1940 at the Cornish School in Seattle, performed by John Cage and Doris Dennison, piano and Gerard Van Steenbergen, narrator. Dance performed by Bonnie Bird and an ensemble of sixteen students |
| Dedicated to: | |
| Choreography: | Bonnie Bird |
| Published: | --- |
| Manuscript: | unknown |
| Text by Archibald MacLeish ("America was Promises"). Location of the score is unknown.
"I had read the poem of Archibald McLeish called "America Was Promises". I was very (...), I guess politically aware, in a sense, to the fact that culture in America was being stamped on in so many ways. His poem, "America Was Promises" deals with the fact that people came to the U.S. from Europe, and they brought their culture with them, and we worshiped that culture, whatever it was. It affected how our houses were built, what kind of furniture people put in, what kind of possessions they had-- their attitudes were very, very European. And yet America was full of promise for new things, new ideas. And this touched me very much because of the fact that what I was doing in Seattle was, in a miniature way, pioneering a new approach to dance and I had gotten pretty passionate about it, and also highly frustrated." (from: "BONNIE BIRD GUNDLACH: DANCER AND DANCE EDUCATOR. Interviews Conducted by William Riess and Heidi Gundlach- Smith July to November 1994". The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.) Sources: Paul van Emmerik: Thema's en Variaties; David W. Patterson (Ed.): John Cage: Music, Philosophy, and Intention (1933-1950); William Riess and Heidi Gundlach-Smith: Bonnie Bird Gundlach: Dancer and Dance Educator |