Lost John Cage Music & Dance Performance | Oakland

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join MCAM and the Mills Music Department for the exciting presentation of Fads and Fancies in the Academy, a work composed by John Cage in 1940 for a dance choreographed by Marian Van Tuyl.

The performance will also include a screening of an archival film of Fads and Fancies in the Academy as well as a performance of Dream (1948), a wistful piece by John Cage in the style of Erik Satie, originally written for piano for a dance by Merce Cunningham.

Originally considered lost, the score was re-discovered when Cage presented it to Don Gillespie at C.F. Peters in 1992, a few months before his death. Written during the legendary 1940 Mills College Summer Session, Fads and Fancies in the Academy was the result of a six-week collaboration between Cage and Van Tuyl. The piece was first performed at Mills in Lisser Hall on January 10, 1941.

The musical component of Fads and Fancies in the Academy with its parodies of popular music and children’s songs illustrates a whimsical, playful side of Cage’s artistic personality and looks forward to his better-known percussion work Credo in US (1942).

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.