Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures

About

Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures sheds new light on the pivotal work of African American choreographer and video artist Blondell Cummings (American, 1944-2015). Through a unique movement vocabulary that she called “moving pictures,” Cummings made dance that combined the visual imagery of photography and the kinetic energy of movement to explore the emotional details of daily rituals, as well as the intimacy of black home life. Her gestures often stemmed from personal memories, community workshops, and photographs. The exhibition draws largely from Cummings’ personal video archive of rarely seen works. Together they reveal her commitment to multidisciplinary art-making that often combined dance with elements of theater, text, photography, and the moving image. This is the first museum exhibition and book dedicated to the artist. Blondell Cummings: Dance as Moving Pictures is a collaboration between Art + Practice and the Getty Research Institute’s African American Art History Initiative. Cummings’ video archive is in the special collections of  the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of New York Public Library.