Ballettabend. Music Walk with Dancers (5 October 1960). [Photographs by Peter Fischer].

(Cologne)., 1960. The Ballettabend or “Ballet Evening” took place in the auditorium of the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium in Cologne on the 5th of October 1960. The participants were none other than the great dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and his dance partner Carolyn Brown, together with the composer John Cage and pianist David Tudor. The evening’s production concluded with “Music Walk with Dancers” pairing a new duet for Cunningham and Carolyn Brown with John Cage’s indeterminate work “Music Walk”. Cunningham and Brown performed a series of movement tasks such as waltzing, skipping, running, dancing a softshoe, doing warm-up exercises, balancing on a dolly, and sitting in chairs. Cage and David Tudor walked about the space playing piano. This first set of eight photographs (each with a printing date stamp of 08.11.61 on verso) show John Cage either backstage, or in preparation for the performance. These include: three informal photographs of John Cage, taken backstage, Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium, Cologne (each 17.8 18.8 cm); two photographs showing Cage climbing through a window of the Gymnasium during a rehearsal for the ‘Ballettabend’ (each 17.9 x 18.7 cm); two photographs showing Cage climbing through the stage trapdoor of the Friedrich-Wilhelm Gymnasium (17.8 x 17.7 cm; 17.8 x 18.7 cm); and one photograph showing Cage preparing his piano for the rehearsal (17.8 x 18.4 cm).